VinFast postpones North Carolina car production to 2025. Here’s why.
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VinFast in NC
Vietnamese automaker VinFast announced in March 2022 that it would open an electric vehicle assembly plant in North Carolina. The battery manufacturing plant will be built in Chatham County and is expected to eventually create 7,500 jobs. It’s the largest economic development announcement in the state’s history. Here is coverage from The News & Observer about the plans.
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Saying it needs “more time to complete administrative procedures,” the Vietnamese automaker VinFast confirmed Friday that its planned $4 billion assembly plant in Chatham County won’t open until 2025.
The company initially targeted production of its fully electric SUVs to begin by the middle of 2024. Yet, almost a year since the project was announced, the 2,150-acre site southwest of Raleigh remains undeveloped.
VinFast has not said when it will start construction. On Friday, a VinFast spokesperson told The News & Observer the company has “already started clearing the site in preparation for heavy construction and expect to begin soon.”
Reacting to the VinFast factory postponement, Gov. Roy Cooper’s spokesperson Sam Chan said the governor remained optimistic about the automaker’s future in the state.
“While shifts in the market have had impacts on construction timelines for industries around the world, VinFast continues to move forward with their electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Chatham County,” Chan said in a statement Friday. She added that some delays weren’t unexpected given the aggressive production timeline VinFast had originally set.
On Feb. 9, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality issued the company an air quality permit. At the time, CEO of VinFast North America Nguyen Thi Van Anh told the N&O this permit would allow the company to “move forward with the Phase 1 construction plan.”
Phase 1 includes the construction of a $2 billion vehicle manufacturing plant. A later phase will focus on a battery production facility.
Nguyen said the company was waiting for additional permits from local agencies before its Moncure site could be operational. These permits, she said, addressed building foundations as well as storm water and sewer.
Last March, Chatham County and the state offered the company $1.25 billion in tax and other incentives to locate here, including about $250 million for road and rail improvements in and around the site. In its deal with the state, VinFast has promised to employ 7,500 people at the site by 2028.
In an email Friday, N.C. Commerce spokesperson David Rhoades said VinFast’s delay to 2025 shouldn’t affect the state’s agreement, writing “at this time, we anticipate no impacts on the company’s grant.”
First 45 cars delivered
In November, VinFast shipped its first electric SUVs to the United States, but its rollout has been bumpy. The company had originally announced customers would receive these cars by the end of the year, but the vehicles sat undelivered while VinFast updated its software to improve mileage range.
On March 1, the company announced it had delivered its first 45 cars to customers in California.
Until recently, VinFast had never produced an electric car. A subsidiary of VinGroup, one of the largest private conglomerates in Vietnam, the company began making gas-powered cars in Vietnam in 2019 before pivoting to electric vehicles and foreign markets.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
This story was originally published March 10, 2023 at 6:23 PM with the headline "VinFast postpones North Carolina car production to 2025. Here’s why.."
