EV Maker VinFast Just Made 2 Huge Moves To Elevate the EV Ownership Experience

In the world of marketing, well-educated folks who work long(ish) hours spend a lot of time worrying about pain points. These are barriers that consumers perceive as preventing them from moving forward on a sale. In the battery-electric world, most of the vehicles and many of the companies themselves are new. This gives buyers pause. Will the battery fail and ruin my resale value? Will I have support if something goes wrong? VinFast has just made strides to take those two worries off the table. 

VinFast’s Unbelievable Battery Warranty
If you have not heard the news lately, Hyundai customers are finding out that battery replacement costs can exceed the value of the car. Not the used car value, but the actual new car value! Two cases in Canada have exposed just how crazy the cost of a replacement battery can be. Tesla owners also know this. Batteries for a Tesla can cost as much as $15K, according to owner reports, and those are for USED batteries!

VinFast is an up and comer. The company is just now trying to break into the U.S. BEV market and the headwinds against the likes of Tesla and Ford are no small thing. Somewhere in a boardroom, a VinFast market person has struck upon a brilliant idea. Remove the worry over battery replacement from the equation.

VinFast will do this by offering a battery warranty with no mileage limit. As long as the vehicle isn’t operated for commercial use, the battery has an unlimited warranty. Time is limited to ten years. However, ten years of driving in America can equate to hundreds of thousands of miles. A person who drives a lot could easily fully depreciate a vehicle within ten years of high-mileage commuting. During that period, the VinFast owner would never need to worry about buying a replacement battery. The vehicle's overall warranty is 10-year/125,000-miles. No brand in America offers a better warranty (sorry, Hyundai). 

VinFast Dealers
As Tesla’s “bang head against wall” experiment has proven, direct car sales sound great but are not easy to pull off in America. After decades of trying to sell directly, Tesla’s retail and service locations do not score higher than traditional car dealers in customer reviews. For example, even in states like Massachusetts, where Tesla enjoys all the same rights and special privileges as traditional new car dealers, the reviews favor dealers, not Tesla’s direct sales and service locations.

VinFast wants to hit the ground running. Therefore, rather than try to spend decades setting up direct sales to achieve a worse result, it is planning to use dealers. In fact, VinFast has already established many dealer locations, primarily focused on the only place where battery-electric vehicles do well, California. Ms. Tran Mai Hoa, Deputy CEO of Sales and Marketing, VinFast Global said: “This is an important step affirming VinFast's commitment to expanding its retail sales network and shortening the time to deliver our products to market. Collaboration with dealers allows VinFast to quickly bring US customers high-quality electric vehicles, good prices and excellent aftersales policies, further promoting our mission of a sustainable future for all.” 

Now that VinFast has established a toehold in the land of BEVs, it is branching out into other areas. Dealer agreements in places like Kansas and North Carolina are now in place. Mr. Danny Williams, Chief Operating Officer of Leith Automotive Group, expressed his enthusiasm, stating: “We are very excited to be one of the first VinFast dealers in the US and the very first in North Carolina, particularly alongside the VinFast’s groundbreaking automobile manufacturing plant. After interacting with VinFast's executive team and experiencing their vehicles firsthand, we were captivated by the brand and knew it was a perfect addition to the Leith Automotive Group.” In total, VinFast has received 70 dealer registration applications across the US and plans to expand its point-of-sale network in the US to 125 locations.

The modern battery-electric vehicle market is closing in on its thirty-year anniversary in America. Now that players from all over the world are focusing on the U.S. market, brands trying to make a positive impression on consumers will try harder and harder to remove the pain points. 
 

Auto dealer image courtesy of VinFast.

John Goreham is an experienced New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can follow John on Twitter, and connect with him at Linkedin.