The Vietnamese electric car manufacturer Vinfast appointed its founder and largest financier Pham Nhat Vuong (55) as CEO on Saturday night (CET). In his role, Vinfast announced on Saturday night that he would monitor and be responsible for global production, sales and marketing on his website
. Vuong is also the founder of the parent company Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest business conglomerate.
Vuong replaces Le Thi Thu Thuy, who has held the position since late 2021. Thuy will lead the Vinfast board in the future. The 55-year-old is now the car manufacturer’s fourth CEO. General Motors veteran James Deluca and former Opel boss Michael Lohscheller (55) have also run Vinfast – so far without resounding success. According to the announcement, the company appointed Nguyen Thi Lan Anh as its new chief financial officer.
After entering the North American market, now is the time to further develop the company’s leadership, the company said. Vinfast was in August last year managed to get listed on the US technology exchange Nasdaq through a merger with a special purpose vehicle – at a time when these so-called Spac IPOs already seemed outdated. Still valued at $85 billion at the start of the stock market, Vinfast now has a market capitalization of just $16.4 billion.
Vinfast was founded in 2017, initially focused on combustion cars and began producing electric vehicles in 2021. Last year, Vuong and Vingroup pledged $2.5 billion in financial support in the form of financing and loans to the ambitious electric car startup. The richest man in Vietnam is said to have contributed a billion dollars from his private assets.
Vinfast is still operating at a loss, with a loss of $2.1 billion in 2022. According to “Automotiv News Europe”, Vinfast ended the third quarter of 2023 with one Loss of $623 million
. According to previous statements, Vuong wants to “reach breakeven by the end of 2024” with Vinfast.
To do this, the manufacturer would have to sell many more cars: In the first half of 2023, Vinfast delivered just 11,315 vehicles, a good 7,000 of which were bought by a Vietnamese taxi company that controls the parent company Vingroup. Fewer than 200 electric vehicles from Vietnam made it to the important US market during the same period. The company was loud “Wall Street Journal”
set the goal of selling between 40,000 and 50,000 electric cars in 2023. From the US news channel However, analysts interviewed by CNBC believe that this is unrealistic.
Vinfast has not yet published any figures for the past year.
The market launch, initially in North America in March 2023, was anything but smooth and was marked by recalls and negative reviews. A little later, Vinfast also laid one in Germany chaotic
Start there. But Vinfast is not alone among the attackers from Asia with its difficulties. BYD, Nio and Great Wall Motor also had a hard time until the end, To gain a foothold in the German market
.
Billionaire Vuong, who has production in a highly automated factory in Haiphong, Vietnam, not far from the capital Hanoi, remains undeterred in his goal of “driving the global revolution of intelligent electric vehicles” and is now taking the expansion into his own hands . A few weeks ago, the manufacturer announced that it would try to launch the European market again after recently missing numerous goals it had set itself. First models of the VF8
should reach customers in Germany by the end of 2023, a spokesman told the “Automotive Week”
. The start of delivery had previously been postponed several times. The manufacturer did not want to say how many pre-orders Vinfast had for the European market.
Vinfast also announced that it wanted to open a total of 125 sales locations in the USA. A factory of its own is scheduled to begin operations in Chatham, North Carolina, in 2025 and will produce up to 150,000 electric vehicles annually in the first phase.
Pham Nhat Vuong, who was born in Hanoi, studied engineering in Russia and laid the foundation for his fortune there with the production of instant noodles. In 1993 he set up the Technocom food company in Ukraine and sold it According to reports
later to Nestlé for an undisclosed sum. In 2000, Vuong moved back to Vietnam, where he subsequently turned his business into a conglomerate Vingroup
expanded. These include, but are not limited to, real estate, resorts, hospitals, schools and tourism. The group now employs tens of thousands of people.