The First SE Asia EV Company You Should Consider to Invest In!
Writing and researching my itinerary is one of my favorite travel rituals. It forces me to read and “do my homework” before I visit a new country.
My foremost concern before I landed in Hanoi last week was that I would be stopped by customs for bribery. Stories about needing to stealthily give the customs extra plastic notes got me worried because have never experienced anything like that in my travels. Even at obscure locations like the Solomon Islands where corruption is rife, I still didn’t have to bribe the customs.
Fortunately for us, the latest escalation of the government’s anti-graft campaign meant that my worries were superfluous.
In July this year, a Vietnamese court handed prison sentences to 54 officials and businesspeople, including a former deputy foreign minister, for taking part in a scheme, in which diplomats and companies took money from Vietnamese citizens abroad who wanted to return home on “rescue flights” during the COVID-19 pandemic when commercial flights were not available.
This is a great move forward for the country, and I am glad to witness it myself as I step onto the soil for the first time.
On several of my Grab rides, a lot of cars and green buses with the prominent “V” sign whizzed past us in Hanoi’s dense traffic, and they are hard to miss. After much web crawling, I found that the vehicles are from VinFast and VinBus, both of which are subsidiaries of VinGroup – the largest conglomerate in Vietnam– founded by property developer and entrepreneur Phạm Nhật Vượng.
Traffic in Hanoi is notoriously bad because of the lack of rules imposed on vehicles, and how unreliable the public transportation system is in the city. A 36km tour to the Quảng Phú Cầu Incense Village on the outskirts of Hanoi, took us more than 1 hour to reach with a private driver. The sheer patience one must have to navigate in the city center is insane. Funnily enough, our guide told us workplaces and schools have adopted a flexible starting time to accommodate the bad traffic in the city.
VinFast cars and VinBuses are locally made in Hải Phòng. The latter opened eight passenger routes since its launch in the capital Hanoi to encourage people to use public transportation. VinBuses' smart technologies are from Taiwan’s Advantech and RAC Electric Vehicles which include the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) such as AI cameras to monitor driver’s behavior, Wi-Fi for passengers, location tracking equipment, in-vehicle surveillance system, fleet management system to increase the overall safety of the vehicles they drive on the road.
VinGroup’s new subsidiary Green and Smart Mobility (GSM) also said it will back ride-hailer Be Group’s efforts to increase the use of VinFast vehicles in Vietnam. South Korea’s Kakao Mobility is also partnering up with GSM to create a comprehensive ride-hailing service in anticipation of Vietnam’s emerging popularity among Korean tourists, and vice versa.
They have also partnered with Taiwan’s ProLogium to develop highly stable oxide electrolyte EV batteries instead of the flammable liquid polymer versions to prevent or delay thermal runaway effect to enable higher energy density in cells and lower manufacturing costs.
Traveling is a great way to discover great and exciting things. No amount of desktop review can give us a good perspective until we visit the country. We get to ask the locals about what was reflected in the news and verify the build qualities of the EVs personally. A lot of things are happening with this VinGroup conglomerate, and keen investors should pay close attention to this rising tech giant in Vietnam.
2023/09/11 Hà Nội
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