VinFast reschedules US electric car facility operation till 2025

Vietnam's carmaker VinFast is set to open its North Carolina electric vehicle and battery manufacturing complex in 2025 instead of 2024 as originally planned.

“In 2022, we entered a series of agreements with North Carolina state and local authorities to build a manufacturing facility spanning across a site measuring approximately 712 hectares in North Carolina. Commissioning of the facility is targeted for 2025,” wrote a VinFast report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, widely known as SEC.

SEC publicized the report, signed by VinFast Global CEO Le Thi Thu Thuy, via its website on March 9 (U.S. time). In the prospectus, the Vietnamese firm explained that more time is needed to complete necessary administrative procedures. It added the plant will create more than 7,000 jobs and make 150,000 EVs a year.

VinFast announced in March last year that it would build the North Carolina complex with a total of $4 billion in investment.

The plant “is the latest example of my economic strategy at work”, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a White House statement on March 29, 2022.

An Air Permit was awarded to VinFast last month by local officials to start construction of the North Carolina facility.

VinFast filed to SEC last year for an initial public offering in the U.S. On March 1, the EV producer delivered its first 45 all-electric cars in California, and more after that.

“We had net losses of VND18,950.2 billion, VND32,219.0 billion and VND49,848.9 billion ($2,111.2 million) in 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively, and total debt (which is our short-term and current portion of long-term interest-bearing loans and borrowings and long-term interest-bearing loans and borrowings, excluding borrowings from related parties) of VND56,204.5 billion ($2,380.3 million) as of December 31, 2022,” the firm wrote in the SEC-publicized prospectus.