The ironic thing of this is that Mr Hoang, the owner of GoGoTV channel, right from the beginning he was a Massively Big fan & supporter of VinFast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoyrRxf3R7A ... but sadly, at the end he was reported to the police by that evil VinFast. He even bought the VinFast car instead of buying a house to marry a girl (you see the meaning of "mua xe cưới vợ?" written in white characters on red background at the top right image)

Electric vehicle startup VinFast has been making its U.S. debut plans known for some time. The Vietnamese automaker has two SUVs queued up to sell here, and the public will be able to see them for the first time as soon as this week.

According to a report from Automotive News, VinFast is scheduled to open six showrooms in California this Thursday, July 14. Like Tesla, they are not dealerships per se. The showrooms will give potential buyers a place to ask questions, look at the car, schedule a test drive and configure one for purchase, but they will be direct-to-customer sales. They'll circumvent the traditional dealership system and will be located in high-traffic areas like shopping centers in Santa Monica, San Diego, San Mateo, Corte Madera, Commerce and Berkeley.

The move may be a good one, as the article points out that the California New Car Dealers Association says EVs took 15% of the market in the first quarter of 2022. Nationally, the percentage of electric sales is below 3.

The two models are dubbed the VF8, which is around the size of a Volkswagen Tiguan, and the larger VF9. The dual-motor VF8 will have the option of 348-horsepower and 368 pound-feet of torque in the base Eco trim for $40,700, or a more powerful Plus trim generating 402 horses and 457 pound-feet for $48,000. The VF9 will only be available with the latter drivetrain and will cost $55,500 for the base and $61,000 for the top trim.

Notably, however, these prices don't include the battery. VinFast says that initially batteries will be leased in order to assuage concerns about the high cost of replacement. Two batteries packs will be offered, an 82 kilowatt-hour standard-range unit will offer approximately 260 miles in range for the Eco, and 248 for the Plus. An extended-range 87.7 kilowatt-hour capacity will bump those numbers to 292 and 277, respectively.

The battery lease starts at $35 a month for the VF8 and $44 for the VF9. The plan includes 310 miles, and exceeding the limit will cost 11 cents a mile for the VF8, or 15 cents a tick for the VF9. Don't worry, there's an unlimited mileage plan as well, which will cost $110 a month and $160 a month for the VF8 and VF9, respectively. Automotive News says that VinFast will freeze the monthly cost for the lifetime of the vehicle to encourage orders this year, implying that these rates might increase as time goes on.

With the lease, VinFast will replace the batteries for free once they can no longer charge above 70%. The company will also offer the option of purchasing the battery entirely for a one-time cost sometime in 2024.

VinFast's ambitious plan has seen the establishment of a U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles last year, but these first six showrooms are just the beginning. It plans to deliver its first cars, open 24 more U.S. showrooms, and break ground on a North Carolina factory by the end of the year.

And the VinFast driver could invite a look, no pry tools necessary, since you can see right down to the rear fender wells where the outboard seatbelts pass through the lower trim. That's because the hole for the belts is probably three times as big as it needs to be, which is one reason that rough roads make it sound like you're driving inside a tom drum—the body structure is right there, with no insulation. Details like that make you wonder if VinFast realized it was allowed to look at other cars before building its own.

But producing decent numbers is the easy part. Maybe 95 percent of car-building concerns hitting easily quantifiable benchmarks. But that other 5 percent, the black magic of ride and handling, interior quality, brake feel—the more subjective stuff—is what defines great cars. It's exceedingly difficult for new companies to get all of that right. As VinFast demonstrates.

In the VF8's logbook, one driver compared the sound of the windshield-wiper motor to that of a 1979 Jeep CJ-7's. We speculated on the odd whirring noises that periodically emanate from behind the dash—is someone firing up an electric leaf blower in there? The steering has a ton of friction on-center, and the power-steering motor is cheap enough that you can feel the steps in its windings if you slowly turn the wheel at rest. The suspension is way underdamped, delivering a bounce-house ride. Clues abound that this car was rushed to the U.S.—when the climate control boots up, the temperature reads in centigrade and then flickers over to Fahrenheit, and the head-up display settings permanently depict a hypothetical left-hand turn onto Nguyen Chi Thanh Street in Hanoi.

But when you're an unknown, price assumes outsize importance. Back in the 1980s, nobody bought the Hyundai Excel because it was better than a Toyota Corolla, but it sold nonetheless. Which begs the question, "What would this car have to cost to convince would-be buyers to take a chance on a complete unknown with immediately obvious flaws?" We're not sure what the answer to that is, other than a lot less than $55,190, which was the number attached to our test car.