Hide press release Show press release Harnessing the Vietnamese spirit, and taking it to the world VinFast is the first volume automotive manufacturer from Vietnam, and the first ever to participate in a major international motor show. Harnessing Vietnamese spirit, VinFast is developing and manufacturing – in Vietnam – its own range of innovative, world-class vehicles, which will be sold worldwide. It is making its global public debut at the 2018 Mondial Paris Motor Show, with two world premieres – the LUX A2.0 sedan and the LUX SA2.0 SUV. These premium models epitomise the company’s philosophy of ‘Vietnamese – Style – Safety – Creativity – Pioneering’. The design direction of these first two cars was influenced by the Vietnamese people through a public vote. This has enhanced the sense of national pride in these products, which pay homage to the country’s natural beauty. The design development for the production cars was undertaken by legendary design house, Pininfarina, giving the cars Italian design flair and sophistication. VinFast is a proud Vietnamese business with a truly global outlook and ambition, and is working with leading design, engineering and supplier partners to ensure its cars exhibit strong Vietnamese character married with Italian design sophistication and European advanced technologies and quality. VinFast products will meet international standards and customer expectations in terms of premium design, dynamics, in-car features and ownership experience. The business has engaged specialist external expertise and recruited senior executives from some of the industry’s leading automotive companies to ensure it can build a highly successful automotive business from scratch within a remarkably short timescale. The VinFast business is led by senior executives including Chairwoman, Le Thi Thu Thuy, who is also the Vice Chairwoman of Vingroup and has over 22 years of experience in the financial services and real estate industry. She is joined by James DeLuca, CEO of VinFast Trading and Production, who is an experienced automotive leader. He spent 37 years with General Motors, where he was responsible for 171 production facilities in 31 countries. The Vice President of Sales is Ms. Lê Thanh Hải, who has nearly 20 years of experience in the automotive industry and was formerly General Sales and Marketing Director at General Motors Vietnam. David Lyon is VinFast’s Director of Design. He has 28 years of automotive design experience in various roles at General Motors, culminating with a role as Executive Director of Asia-Pacific Design. Shaun Calvert, former General Motors Director of Manufacturing Systems and Support in Germany, is VinFast's Vice President of Manufacturing. Kevin Fisher, Vice President of Engineering at VinFast, has previously held senior technical and innovation roles at General Motors, Tata Technologies and Magna Steyr. Roy Flecknell, Vice President of Planning & Program Management, has over 40 years’ experience in with GM in the UK, Germany, Russia and Asia. VinFast is an exceptional example of the pride, spirit and tenacity of the Vietnamese people. Many countries in South East Asia have prioritised a domestic car industry as a source of great pride, and it has led their elevation to a position of respect for their technical and industrial capabilities on the global stage. VinFast is now pioneering the rapid development of Vietnam’s automotive industry. Until now, Vietnam has not had its own car brand for its people: the industry is made up of imports and local assembly with a low localisation rate; as a result, supporting industries are underdeveloped. VinFast will foster the creation of a new local supply chain and give the Vietnamese people a domestic car brand of which they can be proud. All VinFast cars will be manufactured at an all-new, purpose-built, state-of-the-art 335-hectare plant in Hai Phong, northern Vietnam. It is one of Vietnam’s biggest industrial projects ever, delivering a facility that is among the most advanced automotive production complexes in the world. Deliveries of the LUX A2.0 and LUX SA2.0 will commence in Vietnam from June 2019. These will be followed by further vehicles, including a city car, a battery electric car, and an electric bus – all of which are already in development. Shipments to export markets are planned to begin in 2020, less than a year after domestic sales. As a subsidiary of Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest privately-held business, VinFast has the resources and scalability to fulfil its ambition to become South East Asia’s leading vehicle manufacturer, and a significant new player in the global automotive industry. Vingroup’s brands were founded with a mission to strive ‘for a better life for the Vietnamese people’, and Vingroup wanted to build a proud car brand for the country that was stylish, premium and embodied the Vietnamese spirit, that would appeal beyond its domestic market, to the world. Its vision was to create cars with a strong Vietnamese identity that would represent the country – and be competitive – on the global automotive stage. Vingroup had annual revenues in 2017 of 3.9 billion USD. The group, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, is a leader in the Vietnamese construction and real estate sectors, and also has major interests in the country’s education, healthcare, agriculture, tourism and consumer retail sectors. Vietnam’s economy is growing rapidly. Annual GDP per capita has accelerated in recent years to over 6.8% and is forecast to continue at 6.5% p.a. in the coming years. This positive economic outlook creates significantly higher potential for growth in passenger car ownership. Currently, it stands at around 23 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, but estimates suggest that ownership in Vietnam will soon rise to 50 cars per 1,000 inhabitants. For comparison, in Thailand and the US, these numbers stand at 204 per 1,000 and 790 per 1,000, respectively. The current car sales volume in Vietnam is 300,000 units per annum. That is forecast to triple to 900,000 units by 2025. In parallel with the boom in car sales, Vietnam is also investing in significant roadbuilding programmes. Major development works are currently underway, many due for completion by 2020, by which time 21 highways are expected to have been built with a total length of nearly 6,500 km. World-class Italian design flair, influenced by the Vietnamese people<doc-sep>Germany. Italy. Vietnam. It’s the obvious car-manufacturing trilogy. Well, it could be in years to come, as VinFast – Vietnam’s first volume car manufacturer – debuted its first car models at the Paris Motor Show. The LUX A2.0 Sedan is “defined by exceptionally balanced and harmonious proportions”. That translates as long flowing lines, chrome accents and minimalist headlights to create a sleek and executive look. There’s also the LUX SA2.0 SUV, which beefs up the design with a “muscular and robust” appearance, ie a chunky grille, sporty additions and matte black and chrome highlights. Both cars get a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine, available in 173bhp and 227bhp variants, with a 0-62mph time of 8.9 seconds and 7.1 seconds respectively. All will be paired with an eight-speed automatic gearbox. VinFast also plans to introduce a city car, EV and an electric bus, due to export markets from 2020. But these aren’t just any Asian mass-market machines. VinFast prides itself on the Vietnamese “pride, spirit and tenacity”, so much so that the design direction was influenced by a public vote. Bet there were no Boaty McBoatface suggestions over there. The design was also developed alongside Pininfarina in Italy to embrace European themes and styling, too. Kevin Fisher, Vice President of Engineering at VinFast, said: “Our partnership strategy will enable us to achieve two crucial engineering imperatives – quality and timing. We will meet the world-class engineering and quality benchmarks we set for ourselves to ensure we deliver cars with international standards in safety, reliability, refinement and styling. And we will do so having dramatically shortened the timeframe – to less than two years – to bring our first cars to market.”<doc-sep>Where do old BMWs go when their time is up? Vietnam, it seems. VinFast, the newborn Vietnamese automaker, is using BMW platforms to build its first production cars, which it will present at the Paris Motor Show next month. The new large VinFast cars, which Autocar says are based on the outgoing 5-series and X5 SUV, have been designed in collaboration with famed Italian design house Pininfarina. They will have powerplants derived from BMW's two-liter, four-cylinder N20 turbo engines, just without the Valvetronic variable valve timing system. There will be two power figures available: 175 horsepower and 227 horsepower. The transmission is ZF's eight-speed unit. Thanks to the already-existing platforms and by completely bypassing the clay model stage, vehicle development time has reportedly been brought down to just 11 months, from the first sketches to final touches. VinFast has also said that the final designs have been chosen by consumer panels consisting of hundreds of thousands of people. Pilot production is slated to begin in March of next year, with full-scale production commencing in September 2019. The vehicles will be built in a new facility near Hanoi; the company plans to offer five vehicle lines in 2019. In June, GM and VinFast also signed an agreement that enables VinFast vehicles to be sold throughout the existing Chevrolet dealer network in Vietnam, which VinFast's parent company VinGroup will take over. VinFast will also take control of the former GM Hanoi factory that was used to produce GM-Daewoo vehicles. However, the Paris Motor Show cars aren't merely outgoing BMW models with new skin. VinFast's engineers have reportedly "future-proofed" the platforms with improved pedestrian and side-impact protection tech to keep the cars fresh for the upcoming decade, with focus on making the cars pass global regulations so that they would be viable to export. And the people behind VinFast's launch are big names: former long-time General Motors personnel such as designer David Lyon, engineering VP Shaun Calvert, and vehicle line director Roy Flecknell, along with Magna/Tata engineering lead Kevin Fisher. As well as Pininfarina, VinFast also utilizes the services of well-established automotive contractors such as Bosch, Magna and Siemens. VinFast plans to build 500,000 vehicles per year by 2025 — and 1 million e-scooters on top of that. The partly-BMW-based lineup is also bolstered with an entry-level model based on the Opel Karl/Vauxhall Viva, along with an electrified bus developed in collaboration with Siemens. Related Video:<doc-sep>VinFast, Vietnam's first major automaker, showed off its sedan and SUV ahead of the Paris Motor Show, but it was pretty light on details. Now that we're here in Paris, both the cars and here, and we've finally learned a bit more about these two attractive vehicles. In addition to bringing its vehicles before the public for the first time, VinFast finally told us what its cars are named. The sedan is called the Lux A2.0, and the SUV is the Lux SA2.0. Those names aren't exactly great, but many markets are huge fans of letters and numbers instead of names. Why do you think Cadillac moved to its obscene taxonomic structure? While both vehicles rely on a 2.0-liter turbocharged I4 gas engine, the sedan is offered with two separate outputs -- 174 horsepower or 228. The SUV, being larger, only comes with the higher power output. Both variants of I4 are mated to a ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic. Rear-wheel drive is standard on both cars, but the SUV can be upgraded to all-wheel drive. Enlarge Image Andrew Hoyle/Roadshow Neither car is particularly sprightly, though. The Lux A2.0 sedan will reach 62 mph in 8.9 seconds with its least powerful engine variant, but that drops to 7.1 seconds with the more powerful output. The Lux SA2.0 SUV, however, won't break 8.9 seconds with the hi-po variant, and adding all-wheel drive brings the sprint to a pokey 9.1 seconds. The vehicles look the way they do because that's what the people asked for. Seriously -- VinFast asked multiple European design houses to come up with ideas for VinFast's first vehicles, and it put 20 designs online, where Vietnamese citizens could pick their favorites. The winning two designs, which came from Pininfarina, became the bodies seen here. As for tech, VinFast took an interesting turn with its infotainment system. It bucks convention and offers a vertically oriented touchscreen measuring 10.4 inches. Volvo and Tesla are the only major automakers to offer this orientation across their lineups, although it's becoming more popular, as brands like Toyota and Ram begin to offer it on various models and trims. There's also a seven-inch screen in the gauge cluster. While VinFast's cars will be built in Vietnam, and the majority of its sales efforts will focus there, VinFast has expansion on its mind. To that end, it's conducting crash tests to not only Vietnam's standards, but Europe's, as well. Paris Auto Show: Your one-stop shop for everything to come from Paris this year! GAC Motor GS5: China's also determined to expand its automotive footprint in the coming years.<doc-sep>
Vietnam's first automaker, VinFast, teased two debuts for the Paris Motor Show, a sedan and an SUV. Now we finally get to see what they look like -- and they're actually pretty great. You might not expect an automaker's first efforts to look as fully baked as VinFast's sedan and SUV, but these cars look like they could have come from any number of longstanding automakers. VinFast has Italian design house Pininfarina to thank for that, since the two collaborated on these vehicles. The designs you see here actually came from a nationwide poll, where Vietnamese citizens were asked to choose from 20 different design sketches. Both cars carry quite a bit of style. With its thin headlights and high-beltline emphasis, VinFast's SUV comes off like a more mature version of the Hyundai Kona. It's not too far from the design sketch that previewed it, and I especially like the way the grille's "wings" stretch from the emblem to the headlights. Sadly, we haven't seen a shot of the interior yet. The sedan is pretty cool, too. With those "wings" showing up both in the grille and the rear end, it seems that will be the design staple that VinFast will use to separate its cars from the crowd. The sedan packs a fastback-ish silhouette with quite the long hood. VinFast and Pininfarina really put in effort on these cars, and it shows. "In conjunction with Pininfarina, we have carefully sculptured each body line to express the natural beauty of Vietnam and the warm-hearted and dynamic characteristics of its people through a modern and world-class design language," said David Lyon, VinFast's design director, in a statement. When the cars make their debut at the Paris Motor Show on Oct. 2, VinFast will become the first Vietnamese automaker to have an unveiling as part of a major motor show. Here's hoping that they're as pretty in person as they are in these pictures. Keep your eyes peeled to Roadshow, because we'll be on the ground in Paris to get up close and personal with this new automotive duo.