Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
Vietnam's VinFast looks to tiny EV, priced at less than
$10,000, to change its fortunes (2/2)
AP -Aniruddha Ghosal
Tue, June 25, 2024 at 4:08 a.m. PDT·6 min read
(continue)
VinFast aims to sell 20,000 of these cars in Vietnam this
year and deliveries will begin in August. It's being sold on the Southeast
Asian e-commerce website Shopee, with an initial deposit of about $2,000. The
company says more than 27,000 people applied to buy the car in the first three
days after orders opened on May 13.
Many, like Dieu Linh, 32, are first-time car buyers. A businesswoman, she and her husband wanted to switch from motorbikes to a car, which is safer and more comfortable during extreme heat or rains.
"The VF3 price is tempting. But I'll wait and see how it performs on the road before I make my deposit,” she said.
VinFast plans to start selling VF3s in the Philippines this year and in Indonesia, Thailand, the U.S., and Europe by next year.
It opened its first showroom in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, in April and says it has sold about 600 SUVs to Indonesian companies. It has begun construction of a factory in India.
Even in Asian markets, VinFast faces plenty of competition, especially from Chinese EV maker BYD, which has already achieved a big enough scale for cost-efficient manufacturing. Chinese EV makers like BYD and Haima are rapidly expanding in Southeast Asia. But in Vietnam, VinFast's near-monopoly over charging infrastructure — charging stations dot the country, not just in big cities but also in more remote hilly provinces — consumer mistrust of Chinese products and nationalist sentiment may give it an initial edge, said Le Hong Hiep, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
BYD plans to launch three models — the Atto 3, Dolphin and Seal — in Vietnam next month.
VinFast must increase its sales to reduce per unit costs for its sprawling factory in northern Vietnam’s Haiphong province, which has the capacity to make around 250,000 EVs a year but is making a fraction of that.
“An idle factory just burns through money,” said Tu Le, the auto consultant.
India, the world's third-largest car market by sales, offers the promise of scale, but only if VinFast builds its own factory there to enable it to benefit from policies that protect local carmakers. High import taxes mean that even at $9,200, the VF3 would be too expensive for Indians, said Ishan Raghav, the managing editor of the Indian car magazine autoX.
The VF3 might appeal to Indian families looking for a compact car with a range suitable for getting around in India’s crowded cities. But newcomers have to set up broad sales and EV charging networks and that will take a few years, he said. “All of these — manufacturing, sales and service and charging networks — are capital intensive and take time," he said.
Vingroup has launched a company called V-Green to build its own charging infrastructure in Vietnam and other key markets. In Thailand, it plans to build its own charging infrastructure, Vu Dang Yen Hang, chief executive officer of VinFast Thailand, told The Associated Press in an interview in March.
VinFast is racing against time.
Despite prioritizing sales in the U.S., bad reviews for its early models in the hypercompetitive market meant that it sold fewer than 1,000 cars in North America last year and only around 35,000 cars globally, below its target of at least 40,000 cars. About two-thirds of VinFast's revenue in 2023 came from sales to a taxi service owned by Vingroup, according to a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
VinFast's main challenge is to improve its financial performance, said Hiep.
“If they cannot sustain it long enough, they may go bankrupt,” he said.
Translation
（繼續）
VinFast 的目標是今年在越南銷售 20,000 輛此類汽車，交付將於 8 月開始。它在東南亞電商網站 Shopee 上出售，初始押金約為 2,000 美元。該公司表示，5 月 13 日訂單開放後的前三天，就有超過 27,000 人申請購買該車。
許多人，例如 32 歲的 Dieu Linh，都是首次購車。身為一名女商人，她和丈夫想從摩托車換成汽車，這樣在酷熱或下雨時更安全、更舒適。
她說: 「VF3 的價格很吸引。但在我付按金之前，我會先看看它在路上的表現如何」。
VinFast 計劃今年開始在菲律賓銷售 VF3，明年開始在印尼、泰國、美國和歐洲銷售。
該公司於 4 月在印尼首都雅加達開設了第一家陳列室，並表示已向印尼公司出售了約 600 輛 SUV。它已開始在印度建造工廠。
即使在亞洲市場，VinFast 也面臨激烈的競爭，尤其是來自中國電動車製造商比亞迪的競爭，該公司已經實現了足夠大的規模，可以實現高成本效益的製造。比亞迪和海馬等中國電動車製造商正在東南亞迅速擴張。但在越南，VinFast 對充電基礎設施近乎壟斷 - 充電站遍布全國，不僅在大城市，而且在更偏遠的山區省份 - 新加坡ISEAS-Yusof Ishak研究所客座研究員 Le Hong Hiep 表示, 消費者對中國產品的不信任和民族主義情緒可能會給 VinFast 帶來初步優勢。
比亞迪計劃下個月在越南推出三款車型 - Atto 3、Dolphin 和 Seal。
VinFast 必須增加銷量，以降低其位於越南北部海防省的龐大工廠的單位成本，該工廠每年可生產約 25 萬輛電動車，但目前產量僅為其產能的一小部分。
汽車顧問 Tu Le 說: 「閒置的工廠只會燒錢」。
印度作為全球銷售第三大汽車市場，規模上有保証，但前提是 VinFast 在印度建立自己的工廠，使其能夠從保護當地汽車製造商的政策中受益。印度汽車雜誌 autoX 的總編輯 Ishan Raghav 表示，高昂的進口稅意味著即使售價為 9,200 美元，VF3 對於印度人來說也太貴了。
VF3 可能會吸引那些尋求一款適合在印度擁擠的城市出行的小型車的印度家庭。但他表示，新來者必須建立廣泛的銷售和電動車充電網絡，這將需要幾年的時間。他說: 「所有這些 - 製造、銷售、服務以及充電網路 - 都是資本密集的，並且需要時間」。
Vingroup 成立了一家名為 V-Green 的公司，在越南和其他主要市場建立自己的充電基礎設施。 VinFast 泰國公司執行長 Vu Dang Yen Hang 在 3 月接受美聯社採訪時表示，該公司計劃在泰國建立自己的充電基礎設施。
VinFast 正在與時間賽跑。
儘管優先考慮在美國銷售，但其早期車型在競爭激烈的市場中受到的低劣評價使去年該公司在北美的銷量不到1,000 輛，全球銷量僅為35,000
輛左右，低於至少40,000
輛的目標。根據向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件，2023
年
VinFast 約三分之二的收入來自對 Vingroup 旗下計程車公司的銷售。
Hiep 表示，VinFast 的主要挑戰是去提高財務表現。
他說: 「如果他們的財務表現不能維持足夠長的時間，他們可能會破產」。
So, VinFast
is facing the problem of can’t sell enough cars. VinFast’s factory in northern
Vietnam has the capacity to make around 250,000 EVs a year but is making a
fraction of that. The VF3 is trying to enter the Indian market, but it has to
set up broad sales connections and EV charging networks and that will take a
few years to achieve. Now, it seems that EV
business is not that profitable after all because of keen competition.
沒有留言:
張貼留言