Revisiting VinFast’s Hai Phong Manufacturing unit: Transformation Full

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A First-Hand Account Of VinFast’s Automotive Evolution

I’ve been lucky sufficient to go to the VinFast manufacturing complicated in Hai Phong twice — as soon as in 2022, simply after the pandemic and through its early EV transition, and once more simply final week, as a part of a Philippine media delegation.

My dad was writing about VinFast as early as 2017 when the automobile firm first introduced the discharge of the LUX A2.0 and LUX SA2.0. These had been inside combustion engine (ICE) fashions, primarily based on BMW platforms, and used the N20 turbocharged engine. It was the corporate’s first try in automobile manufacturing. 

4 years in the past, my dad wrote this about VinFast: “Their strongest asset just isn’t expertise. VinFast is dedicated to being a worldwide electrical automaker. And the strongest asset it has in its possession to realize this purpose is the supercharged pondering and indomitable spirit of the folks of VinFast, particularly, and people of VinGroup, basically.”

Now, that wasn’t a paid influencer blabbing what the script stated. That got here from an publicity to a few years of automobile meeting and publicity to engineering, strategies. strategies, and largely, folks. To me, that was a forecast, which to at the present time, regardless of of all of the challenges the corporate confronted, he nonetheless firmly believes in.

He provides, “I not solely notice the folks, the tradition, however now the seemingly huge quantities of assets the VinGroup has.”

Three Excursions So Far

That 2022 journey was the second for CleanTechnica. That is the third.

Kyle Discipline did the primary one three years in the past. I joined my dad, as we had been nonetheless each writing for an additional newspaper. It was in 2022 when VinFast was able to ship the primary VF8s and VF9s to America. I recall him asking embarrassing inquiries to the executives of VinFast in regards to the firm’s readiness to export to the world’s hardest auto market.

That query was directed to then-VinFast CEO Madam Le Thi Thu Thuy in regards to the firm’s readiness to enter the US market, seemingly unprepared, and I requested, “why not as an alternative concentrate on the Southeast Asian market first?” VinFast might need a greater probability with their nearer neighbors. “Most likely a neater market to promote to.” Madam Thuy firmly replied saying, “we’re as much as the problem of the US market,” and replying in regards to the Asian market query, “we’re coming to Asia and the Center East, and the market will probably be prepared. However we have to begin the enterprise within the US first.”

The distinction between these three visits tells a narrative that goes far past manufacturing numbers or press releases. It is a story in regards to the hole between ambition and execution, and what it takes to shut it.

Not possible, Attainable

Again then, the numbers nonetheless appeared inconceivable.

Floor damaged in September 2017. Full manufacturing by June 2019. Simply 21 months to rework 828 acres of land into a whole automotive manufacturing facility — press store, paint store, meeting strains, and engine store totally operational. Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc didn’t exaggerate when he known as it a “miracle.”

When VinFast broke floor on that 335-hectare website, backed by Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest personal conglomerate, they weren’t simply constructing a manufacturing facility. They had been establishing an emblem of nationwide aspiration, a bodily manifestation of Vietnam’s willpower to leap from manufacturing hub to innovation chief. With full authorities backing, together with free land and beneficiant tax incentives, VinFast delivered on a promise: the primary high-volume Vietnamese-branded vehicle.

From day one, the ability deployed cutting-edge automation, with 1000’s of robots from Siemens and ABB dealing with stamping, welding, portray, and meeting. It was, and stays, the one Vietnamese plant able to full, core automobile manufacturing in Vietnam.

2022: Spectacular Execution On A Steep Studying Curve

RGBT: My first go to to Hai Phong in 2022 left me genuinely impressed, however with reservations I couldn’t fairly shake. The ability was undeniably spectacular: gleaming robots shifting in choreographed precision, the size of the operation, the apparent funding in world-class gear.

As context, my a few years as a motoring journalist uncovered me to automobile factories worldwide. Volkswagen in Germany within the early 2000s, the Honda, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, and Suzuki crops, Ford in Michigan and Corvette in Bowling Inexperienced, Chery, BYD, and SAIC in China.

Then working for Nissan, I’ve each noticed actions on the now shuttered Murayama Meeting Plant, the Yokohama Engine Plant, the soon-to-be closed Oppama Plant (slated to shut by the top of fiscal 12 months 2027), the Tochigi Car Meeting Manufacturing unit and the Shonan Mild Business Car Plant. I’ve additionally immersed within the two Nissan Kyushu factories.

So what I noticed at VinFast in 2022, regarded and sounded proper.

However one thing felt totally different from the Japanese crops I’d toured over time. It wasn’t something I may simply {photograph} or quantify. It was within the particulars, the invisible issues that separate a manufacturing facility with nice gear from a manufacturing facility with nice observe.

Strolling into Hai Phong in 2025, simply three years later, the distinction was fast and profound. This wasn’t simply incremental enchancment — it was a elementary maturation. The plant that had impressed me with its ambition in 2022 now commanded respect with its execution.

Electrification Thriller To Mastery

In 2022, the battery operations had been purposeful however by-product.

VinFast was primarily assembling battery packs from imported cells and modules — refined Lego blocks from worldwide suppliers being put collectively in Vietnam. The technical functionality was there, however the facility felt extra like a really superior meeting line than a real innovation middle. 

The engineers had been educated, the processes regarded environment friendly, however there was a dependence on exterior experience that was palpable, solutions to many questions typically referenced partnerships with international suppliers moderately than in-house growth.

Quick ahead to 2025. Since I used to be with my dad on the 2022 journey, I seen the foremost shifts in manufacturing and what I can solely describe as mastery. After I requested detailed questions on battery chemistry or thermal administration improvements, they clearly assumed mastery, a shokunin (craftsman) degree of information.

I can solely say that the battery complicated we toured in 2025 was unrecognizable from 2022.

What had been primarily an meeting operation had developed into a real innovation hub. VinFast engineers now design proprietary battery administration programs in-house. The thermal administration parts are domestically developed. Most strikingly, the corporate has begun creating its personal battery chemistries in partnership with international expertise leaders — however with Vietnamese engineers main the work, not simply observing it.

The mixing is seamless: analysis labs sit adjoining to manufacturing strains, permitting the fast prototyping and testing that marks true innovation. After I requested technical questions this time, the solutions got here with the boldness of people that had solved the issues themselves, not imported the options.

The standard management programs have been revolutionized. AI-driven inspection programs now detect microscopic defects that had been invisible to the human eye. However extra importantly, the tradition has shifted from inspection-based high quality to prevention-based high quality — the programs are designed to make defects inconceivable, not simply catchable.

Manufacturing capability has expanded dramatically to help the plant’s formidable goal of 950,000 autos yearly by 2026, nevertheless it’s the high quality of that capability that impressed me most.

The Heavy Urgent

The stamping plant was maybe the place the hole between ambition and execution was most seen. The presses had been trendy, the robots spectacular, and the velocity was outstanding. However once you regarded carefully on the panels — actually studied the floor high quality, the consistency from half to half — you might see the distinction between a plant that had been working for 3 years versus one which had been perfecting its craft for 3 a long time.

Panel gaps weren’t horrible, however they weren’t tight. Floor high quality was acceptable, however you’d often see minor imperfections that might by no means go muster at a Lexus or Genesis plant. The standard management appeared to rely closely on catching defects moderately than stopping them — inspectors working laborious, however the programs not but mature sufficient to eradicate variation on the supply.

Extra tellingly, there was a sure… tentativeness in how the plant operated. Not incompetence — removed from it — however that exact sort of cautious deliberation that comes earlier than expertise breeds intuition. The plant had the strikes down, nevertheless it hadn’t but made them muscle reminiscence.

If the battery plant evolution was spectacular, the stamping transformation was nothing in need of outstanding. Each press has been recalibrated to tolerances measured in microns — the sort of precision I’ve solely seen in German or Japanese services with a long time of refinement.

The technician who guided us by way of the stamping plant didn’t simply present us the method, he demonstrated the obsession with precision that now permeates each operation. Contemporary physique panels are inspected with an depth that borders on paranoid. Superior imaginative and prescient programs examine every stamped panel in real-time towards good CAD fashions, with AI algorithms figuring out variations invisible to human inspectors.

However the true change isn’t the expertise — it’s the philosophy. In 2022, high quality management was one thing that occurred at inspection stations. In 2025, high quality is constructed into each stage of the method. Die administration programs guarantee good temperature and lubrication for each press strike. Statistical course of management methodologies borrowed from aerospace manufacturing imply variation isn’t simply minimized — it’s engineered out.

The panels coming off the road in 2025 would take a look at dwelling in any premium automobile in any market. The fit-and-finish that was merely acceptable in 2022 is now genuinely glorious. The hole has closed.

Realized: Kaizen

What the plant lacked in 2022 wasn’t expertise or funding. On the Japanese crops I visited, you see a long time of collected studying embedded in numerous small optimizations. A instrument positioned simply so. A workflow refined by way of 1000’s of iterations. The institutional data that turns good processes into nice ones.

Hai Phong in 2022 had carried out greatest practices wholesale, nevertheless it hadn’t but earned them by way of expertise. The plant was working earlier than it had totally realized to stroll.

Right here is extra context. When working for Chery, I visited the Wuhu plant in 2012 and felt this similar “kaizen studying” that I felt at VinFast then. However in response to Deriq, this has all modified.

It’s kaizen (改善) or “change for the higher” and even higher, “steady enchancment.” It is a tradition I used to be enveloped in for a few years. 

Kaizen, I came upon, doesn’t occur in a single day. It’s a long-term strategy to systematically bettering each course of inside a corporation — from manufacturing and provide chain to workplace procedures and administration — by specializing in small, incremental adjustments moderately than massive, radical transformations.

Strolling the manufacturing flooring in 2025, I lastly noticed what had been lacking in 2022: observe. Apply makes kaizen. Not simply procedures being adopted, however mastery being demonstrated. The hesitation was gone, changed by the fluid confidence that comes from having achieved one thing 1000’s of instances and realized from each repetition.

The Japanese and Korean crops I’d used as psychological benchmarks? Hai Phong is now working at that degree. The actions are economical, the workflows optimized, the standard consciousness embedded moderately than enforced. The plant has earned its professionalism by way of three years of relentless enchancment.

The Tradition Of Fast Motion

What drove this transformation turned clear when VinFast executives shared Chairman Pham Nhat Vuong’s philosophy: “If one thing’s mistaken, repair it instantly.”

This isn’t only a slogan — it’s how the complete operation capabilities. When our delegation test-drove the VF3, VF6, and VF9 on the corporate’s proving grounds, the engineers actively inspired us to push the autos laborious and supply brutally trustworthy suggestions. In comparison with the 2022 occasion, this time it isn’t the rigorously managed experiences typical of automotive press occasions, however real openness to criticism.

One govt instructed us how, when US clients reported software program points, Chairman Vuong ordered a right away investigation. Inside six months, the issues had been totally resolved — a unprecedented turnaround that might be inconceivable at conventional automakers with their layers of paperwork and quarterly planning cycles.

This urgency, as soon as channeled purely into velocity of building, has been redirected into velocity of enchancment. The identical depth that constructed the plant in 21 months now drives its day by day refinement.

The Ecosystem Benefit

What distinguishes Hai Phong isn’t simply the ability itself — it’s the way it integrates into Vingroup’s broader ecosystem. Our delegation visited VinUniversity, the place partnerships with Cornell, the College of Pennsylvania, and Nanyang Technological College guarantee world-class training is feeding expertise straight into the plant.

The proximity of VinMec Sensible Metropolis Hospital, with its AI-driven diagnostics and robotic programs, creates sudden synergies. Medical-grade precision manufacturing strategies migrate to automotive purposes. The obsessive consideration to cleanliness and contamination management in healthcare environments has elevated manufacturing facility flooring requirements.

This interconnection of training, healthcare, and manufacturing creates a self-reinforcing cycle of innovation that few automakers can replicate. It compounds over time, and in 2025, the compounding is clearly seen.

From Actual Property To Manufacturing, Training, & Drugs

The VinFast Hai Phong plant’s journey from 2022 to 2025 mirrors the broader maturation of Vietnam’s industrial ambitions. The nation that shocked the world by constructing an automotive plant in 21 months has now demonstrated one thing probably extra spectacular: the flexibility to shut the execution hole with established business leaders in simply three years.

Hai Phong was a testomony to what cash, willpower, and trendy gear may accomplish shortly. Spectacular, however unproven. It was in April 2022 that VinFast introduced it might drop ICE manufacturing and focus solely on creating and manufacturing electrical autos. That was a transparent technique. They knew what they had been as much as. 

In 2025, it’s an indication of what occurs when that preliminary funding is mixed with obsessive steady enchancment, cultural dedication to high quality, and the knowledge to be taught from each mistake. The plant hasn’t simply caught as much as Japanese, German and Korean requirements — in some areas, significantly the mixing of AI-driven high quality management and the velocity of innovation cycles, it’s pushing new boundaries.

The ability’s goal of 950,000 autos yearly by 2026 now not looks like wishful pondering. Standing on the manufacturing flooring, watching panels stamped to micron-level precision, batteries assembled with pharmaceutical-grade high quality management, and autos examined by engineers who genuinely wish to hear criticism, the quantity feels achievable.

The miracle isn’t simply that VinFast constructed Hai Phong in 21 months. The miracle is what they’ve constructed within the three years since — not simply extra capability, however real mastery. From the robotic meeting strains to the battery innovation labs, from the precision stamping presses to the take a look at tracks the place engineers welcome our harshest suggestions, Hai Phong has developed from an emblem of ambition into proof of functionality.

Vietnam isn’t simply aspiring to compete in international automotive manufacturing anymore. With the professionalism and observe now evident at Hai Phong, it has arrived.

And maybe most spectacular: they’re nonetheless accelerating.

This story was largely written by Deriq Bernard E. Tribdino, with inputs from Ysabelle Bianca Fernandez who lined the VinFast Familiarization Tour final October 14 for me. I put my inputs in italics. — Raymond