VinFast Is Refocusing on Asia, Planning to Sell 300,000 Vehicles
•February 11, 2026
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Companies Mentioned
Why It Matters
The pivot shifts capital toward regions where volume can offset fixed costs, improving VinFast's path to profitability and reshaping the competitive landscape of emerging‑market EVs.
Key Takeaways
- •VinFast aims 300,000 annual EV sales by 2026
- •U.S. losses exceed $3 billion, sales stuck low
- •Pivot targets India, Southeast Asia low‑price segments
- •Chinese EV makers already dominate targeted Asian markets
- •Scale required to offset fixed manufacturing costs
Pulse Analysis
VinFast's retreat from North America underscores the harsh economics of the EV sector when scale and incentives misalign. After spending billions on branding, a California‑based sales network, and a planned North Carolina plant, the company recorded more than $3 billion in losses and never secured the $7,500 federal tax credit that cushions competitors. Without a credible volume trajectory, fixed costs in logistics, service, and retail quickly eroded any margin, prompting a strategic reset toward markets where capital can be deployed more efficiently.
In India and Southeast Asia, VinFast is betting on affordable models priced under $20,000, a segment that commands millions of potential buyers. The firm’s $2 billion Tamil Nadu investment aims to lock in local supply chains and benefit from early‑stage EV adoption, where price sensitivity outweighs brand prestige. However, the company will face entrenched Chinese players such as BYD, SAIC and Chery, which already enjoy economies of scale, battery supply advantages, and deep dealer networks. VinFast’s success will hinge on rapid localization, aggressive pricing, and leveraging fleet contracts like GSM taxis to generate predictable demand.
For investors and industry observers, VinFast’s pivot illustrates a broader lesson: EV manufacturers must prioritize volume‑driven cost dilution over aspirational market entry. The Asian focus offers a realistic breakeven horizon, but only if VinFast can match the production efficiency of its Chinese rivals. Should the company achieve its 300,000‑unit target, it could validate a hybrid growth model—using emerging‑market scale to fund future re‑entries into premium markets like the United States. Until then, the firm’s survival rests on disciplined execution in a highly competitive price war.
VinFast is Refocusing on Asia, Planning to Sell 300,000 Vehicles
VinFast’s Retreat From America Was Inevitable
A recent Nikkei Asia report said that Vietnamese carmaker VinFast was targeting a 300,000 annual vehicle sales in the coming years, with India and Southeast Asia positioned as core growth markets.
That global total still has Europe and North America in mind, and underscores the scale of VinFast’s ambition. For those of us who have followed the company from the start, the figure is significant not because it sounds large, but because it represents a threshold where fixed manufacturing, R&D, and retail costs begin to dilute meaningfully.
In other words, 300,000 units is less a headline and more a breakeven hypothesis.
Just before the VinFast Media Thanksgiving event in Manila happened, I sat down with VinGroup communications managers and asked them what will happen to North America. Will VinFast withdraw from the U.S. and Canada? The stern reply was in the negative, stating that abandoning the market is not in the best interest of the brand and the VinFast owners there. So the operative word is restructuring.
I asked if they saw starting in North America a mistake, now that the numbers are pressuring the wallet.
“Why did VinFast really start in America, when Asia is much closer, neighborly and friendlier?”
The reply? That wasn’t the plan—the company has always set its sights to North America, which has both the purchasing power and the volume. Then Europe for charm and a sustainable market. Then finally to Asia, which they felt was the easiest to penetrate.
Scaling back
After spending several billion dollars attempting to establish itself in the U.S. and Canadian EV markets, the Vietnamese automaker is now scaling back its North American presence. With annual net losses exceeding $3 billion and U.S. sales never rising beyond the low four‑figure annual range, the mismatch between market friction and financial endurance became impossible to ignore.
VinFast is restructuring not because sentiment shifted, but because the numbers stopped cooperating.
The pivot now underway toward India and Southeast Asia is not just a course correction. It is a survival maneuver. These markets offer lower price thresholds, denser demand, and early‑stage EV adoption—conditions where scale can still be achieved before capital is exhausted. That does not mean VinFast is entering easy territory. It means the competitive battlefield has shifted from American incumbents to Chinese manufacturers that already operate at industrial scale.
Why the U.S. Never Had a Viable Path to Scale
VinFast’s U.S. strategy was built on the assumption that sufficient capital could build a brand, never known to the market until the first car landed in California, and yet to be proven capable. The most finicky car market after Japan, due mostly to the availability of many brands and many vertical layers of variants per make and model, substituted for missing advantages in incentives, brand credibility, and manufacturing scale. That assumption collapsed quickly once sales data arrived.
The most immediate handicap was incentives. Without eligibility for the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, VinFast vehicles entered the market with an effective price penalty compared with domestic and Korean competitors, a VF 8 priced near a Tesla Model Y transacting closer to $40,000 after incentives. In a U.S. EV market where demand below $50,000 is highly price‑sensitive, that gap alone suppressed volume before other factors even came into play.
Early quality and perception issues then locked the company into that low‑volume trap. Critical reviews in 2022 and 2023 damaged credibility before VinFast had any meaningful installed base. Then there was the Pleasanton, California, incident. Monthly U.S. sales never escaped the low hundreds, far below the level needed to amortize fixed costs in retail, logistics, and service infrastructure. Recovering from that reputational deficit would have required years of product iteration and billions more in marketing and warranty support—capital the company no longer had the luxury to deploy.
The North Carolina plant, originally announced as a $4 billion investment with production targeted for 2025, slipped into an undefined future. Without localized production, VinFast forfeited both cost parity and access to U.S. incentives. At that point, American manufacturing stopped being a strategy and became a placeholder.
Taken together, the U.S. effort illustrates a basic industrial reality: when costs are high and volume is low, losses compound quickly. Without a credible path to scale, persistence becomes self‑destructive.
Incidentally, Canada offered none of the upside that might have justified patience.
The total auto market is roughly one‑tenth the size of the U.S., EV adoption slowed in 2024 as interest rates climbed above 5 %, and incentive structures were weaker and more fragmented. Maintaining high‑rent corporate stores in Toronto and Vancouver for a few hundred annual sales was never economically defensible. Closing roughly half of Canadian locations is a delayed acknowledgment of the math.
Asia Is Not Expansion — It Is a Return to Industrial Logic
VinFast’s pivot to Asia reflects a return to conditions where scale is still achievable. In North America, the company led with premium SUVs aimed at $45,000–$70,000 buyers. In Asia, the emphasis shifts to smaller vehicles like the VF 3 and VF 5, targeting sub‑$15,000 to $20,000 price bands. Those segments represent millions of annual buyers across India and Southeast Asia, not narrow premium niches dependent on brand prestige.
India, in particular, is about timing rather than dominance. The country sells more than 4 million vehicles annually, yet EV penetration remains below 3 %. VinFast’s $2 billion investment in Tamil Nadu is a bet on entering early enough to build local supply chains before Western incumbents fully mobilize. Even capturing one to two percent of India’s annual market would generate volumes that exceed VinFast’s entire North American experiment.
Unlike in the U.S., VinFast also enters Asian markets with a built‑in demand engine. The GSM taxi fleet allows the company to deploy tens of thousands of vehicles directly into service, generating utilization, operational data, and predictable revenue. This is demand creation through use, not persuasion—an advantage VinFast never had in North America.
Why BYD, SAIC, and Chery Took a Different Path
VinFast’s U.S. failure is instructive because Chinese automakers largely avoided making the same bet.
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BYD prioritized China, Southeast Asia, and price‑sensitive export markets long before attempting limited Western entry.
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Quietly present in Europe, SAIC spread risk through joint ventures and regional brands instead of concentrating capital in a single high‑friction market.
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Chery focused on emerging‑market scale, local assembly, and aggressive pricing rather than U.S.-style retail theatrics.
What these companies share is not just scale, but discipline. They expand where volume arrives before incentives, where logistics costs are manageable, and where learning curves reduce costs faster than subsidies ever could.
The Asian Market Is Crowded — and the Chinese Are Already There
VinFast’s pivot does not place it in open territory. It places it in direct competition with Chinese manufacturers that already control battery supply chains, operate at several times VinFast’s annual volume, and price aggressively with thinner margins. In Southeast Asia, BYD and SAIC already command scale and mindshare. In India, Chinese‑designed platforms enter indirectly through partnerships while domestic automakers race to defend share.
This is no longer a question of market access. It is a contest over who can survive prolonged price competition while scaling fast enough to dilute fixed costs.
Scale Is the Only Remaining Variable
Despite a 58 % revenue increase in 2024, VinFast still lost more than $3 billion. The implication is straightforward. Profitability will not come from branding, geography, or sentiment. It will come—if at all—from volume. But does VinFast’s chairman really care? Vingroup Founder and VinFast CEO Pham Nhat Vuong has committed over $14 billion to the EV manufacturer, including more than $2 billion of his personal fortune, vowing to support its growth until “his money runs out.”
By pivoting toward Asian markets, it is clear his pockets are still full. A clear plan to break even this year is, for me, an indication that he will be coming back to North America, when the time is right.
A 300,000‑unit annual delivery target for 2026 is plausible in dense Asian markets. It was structurally incompatible with the U.S. model VinFast attempted to build. The lesson is not that VinFast failed in America. It is that EV manufacturing punishes friction and rewards scale, and only certain markets allow scale to arrive before capital runs out.
Asia (that means India too) by my guesstimates guarantees VinFast’s success. It is the only place where the math still has time to work.
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