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First Drive: The 2023 VinFast VF8 Is Unacceptable


Mack Hogan
Fri, May 12, 2023 at 11:00 AM EDT



First Drive: The 2023 VinFast VF8 Is UnacceptableMack Hogan


VinFast faces an uphill battle. The Vietnamese company, a subsidiary of the country’s largest private employer VinGroup, is attempting to launch an all-electric car brand in America in a crowded market. Legacy automakers, no-name newcomers, and market leaders like Tesla are all trying to sell Americans on electric crossovers. As an utter unknown from an obscure brand, VinFast’s VF8 has to be great to have any hope of poaching buyers.

It isn’t great. It isn’t even good.



Mack Hogan

The paint quality, interior design, switchgear, and Pininfarina exterior styling meet industry standards, and the car worked during our 90-minute drive without mechanical failure. But in the context of the American EV market, where the $56,000 VinFast VF8 City Edition Plus I drove is up against mature, excellent products, the whole endeavor seems hopeless.

The problem isn’t as apparent on paper. The VF8 City Edition is an all-electric five-seat crossover, bigger than a Volkswagen ID.4, offering 207 miles of range in “Eco” trim or 191 in the upscale “Plus” variant. That’s below average for the class, but the City Edition is also the temporary early-adopter offering. The cars en route from Vietnam are standard editions. They’ll have not-yet-certified EPA ranges of 264 and 243 miles for the Eco and Plus, respectively. That VinFast chose to equip the first batch with a less-dense battery from Samsung when its long-term and volume battery supplier is CATL is just one of many questionable decisions in the VF8’s gestation.



Vinfast

Still, the all-wheel-drive-only VF8 City Edition produces an adequate 349 hp in the Eco guise and 402 hp in the spendier Plus model. In the Plus model I sampled, there was plenty of power for daily driving, enabling a 0-60 time of 5.5 seconds. None of these specs are astounding, but all of them put the VF8 in line with the competition.

Where it falls behind is in the execution. You don’t notice it until you get inside, as the attractive bodywork and high-quality paint are two of the only execution highlights. As soon as I sat in the overstuffed, unsupportive seats, though, I noticed flaws. The entire door card flexes when you pull the handle shut. The panel gaps are large and inconsistent. The icons on the center screen are visibly pixelated and respond inconsistently. Buttons are made of nice materials but feel mushy.



Mack Hogan


Whatever. These are nuances that even established carmakers get wrong. The unforgivable stuff happens when you’re in motion.

The VinFast VF8 has the worst body control of any modern car I’ve ever driven. Over a 90-minute drive, the 5600-lb SUV never stopped bobbing, swaying, and bucking, producing near-constant head-tossing motions. Riding in the passenger seat, I became car sick for the first time in years. When I switched seats with the driver, he felt queasy, too, even though he says he’s never been the type to get car sick. Despite the firmness you feel over impacts, though, the VF8 is also sloppy and prone to excessive roll in corners. It is unclear if this is the result of poor tuning or fundamental issues with the vehicle’s suspension geometry (control blades at the rear, “smart axles” at the front), but the ride quality alone is enough to disqualify the VF8 from serious consideration.

Steering, too, is the worst I’ve experienced on a production car. There is zero feel. Not zero feel in the hyperbolic way some people use to describe modern BMWs or boring CUVs, zero feel as in no relation between what I felt happening as I turned the wheel and what the wheels were actually doing. The turn in was relatively lazy and then somewhere in the ratio it gets sharper, but with no complementary change in force required. Mid-way through a corner, the nose would suddenly tuck in and upset the balance of the car, which was already listing over in unpredictable ways. Anything more than a dawdling pace felt sketchy.



Vinfast


Not that I wanted to rush, anyway, as the VF8 did not inspire confidence under braking. On any slight downward slope, the car bucked and heaved under braking, squirming underfoot. Hard acceleration was equally uninviting due to the suspension’s inability to cope with serious forces.

Even cruising at a steady speed on flat ground, the VF8 had issues. The vehicle we drove had just under 900 miles on the odometer and had been prepped by VinFast corporate for the event. Yet it was clearly out of alignment. It pulled hard to the right on the highway. At least the lane keeping aids and adaptive cruise control worked.



Vinfast


When the car’s hardware wasn’t annoying or scaring me, its software was. Talking about the car prompted its “Hey Vinfast” smart assistant to pop up, but attempting to use it was a fool’s errand. It would occasionally correctly interpret the words of a command, displaying what we said on the screen, but still fail to execute the valid command. That was far from the biggest issue, though. The car beeped and flashed warnings and buzzers constantly. Disabling the various warnings required a deep exploration into the infotainment system’s confounding menu structure. Each setting required two more taps than I expected, and never lived under the sub-menu you’d first check. I should have taken notes, because turning off the car reset all of the driver aid settings.

Other journalists at the event reported various malfunctions and issues, though none were consistent among all of the assembled VF8s. One group reported no major issues and no other journalists had the alignment problem, so my experience may not be entirely representative. Everyone, however, agreed on a few things: The software and constant beeping was annoying; the quality and details were questionable; and the ride was abysmal.



Mack Hogan


I could continue, but I trust you understand that the VF8 has a litany of issues that would prevent me from ever recommending it. Perhaps more importantly, the company could not seem to articulate a compelling reason why anyone should choose one over the competition. VinFast Innovation and Concepts Lead Jonathan Chen said that the pitch for the VF8 is that it offers good storage room, “best-in-class” aesthetics, and smart service features that are better than the market. Pressed on what sort of digital experience VinFast customers get that’s better than the competition, he said the car has standard CarPlay, Android Auto, and on-board TuneIn and iHeartRadio functionality. Sure, great.

The company also has a digital video partner that it’s “excited to announce” soon. Let’s hope it’s more impressive than Tesla’s video partner, Netflix.



Vinfast



The CEO of VinFast USA, Van Anh Nguyen, had a different pitch. She said the brand’s appeal is in selling beautifully crafted and built spacious SUVs, using inclusive pricing and sales policies, and “quality products, that’s for sure.”

While the VF8 City Edition Eco is available for $414 a month with $5729 at signing, and undeniably spacious, quality is a big unknown for the entire brand. As we spoke, Nguyen sat 15 feet from a VF9 prototype, which was propped up by jack stands in the rear after the air suspension deflated. One executive told me that it had deflated in transit, and that it wouldn’t happen in a customer driveway. When I asked if it’d re-inflate if they turned it on, he said yes, but said there was no charger next to it and they didn’t want to deplete the battery. I’m not sure who he expected to believe that. Later on, I mentioned the clearly malfunctioning air suspension to the company’s director of communications, and he offered a different explanation: “It’s a prototype.”



Mack Hogan



That’s what the company said when journalists drove pre-production VF8s in Vietnam. The assumption is that it’ll be fixed by the time the car launches, but our experience with explicitly production-spec VF8s didn’t inspire confidence. The company is so focused on getting to market that it doesn’t appear to be worried about getting everything right. At least VinFast is offering an impressive 10-year, 125,000-mile comprehensive warranty, so that teething issues will be worked out on the company dime. That gives the company some room to take risks, to be bold. According to Nguyen, moving fast is in the company’s DNA. She beamed with pride when she noted that work on the VF8 started “three or four” years ago. Even for carbuilders with decades of experience, it is exceedingly rare to develop and launch an all-new platform for a new market in under 5 years.

“However, I like to emphasize that working with urgency doesn’t mean that we are taking shortcuts,” she told Road & Track. “We are not cutting corners in anything. In manufacturing, or in engineering, we still have to take all of the steps that the company needed.”



Vinfast


I can’t say I agree. Also on the company agenda: Launching Canada next week, launching the standard edition VF8 this year, launching the VF9 this year, and then launching the VF6 and VF7 within the following year. It’s a cadence few automakers in the world could pull off.

The ambition is commendable. Going into the drive, I wanted to give the company the benefit of the doubt. The small-market conglomerate turned international automotive power player is a story we’ve heard before, from both Hyundai and Kia. Like the early export cars from those brands, though, the VF8 is starting things off on rough footing. The car is simply unfinished, wholly uncompetitive, and in all honesty among the worst modern cars I have ever driven. Getting it into production and over the many regulatory hurdles for the U.S. market was an undeniable feat. But the real work lies ahead. If VinFast wants enough market share to justify its sizable investment in its upcoming U.S. manufacturing facility, it’ll have to do a lot better than this.

https://news.yahoo.com/first-drive-2023 ... 00202.html

MotorTrend Brand| FIRST DRIVES


2023 VinFast VF8 First Drive: Return to Sender


VinFast has the right idea, but the VF8 is nowhere near ready for the customer deliveries that are already happening.

Scott EvansWriterMay 12, 2023



Fifteen years ago, the foundations for my car-reviewing philosophy were laid by my first editor-in-chief, Angus MacKenzie. "It's simple," he told me, "I want all cars to be good, and I'm disappointed when they're not." I apply it to every car I drive, new or old, stock or custom. Many of us in automotive journalism have even taken to saying there are no "bad" cars anymore, as even the least impressive cars on the market are all pretty decent nowadays. That's no longer true. The 2023 VinFast VF8 is nowhere near ready for public consumption, yet it's already being delivered to customers.

It's too bad, because VinFast seems to have the right idea here. Two-row SUVs are the heart of the market, and especially so for EVs. The VF8 is roomy and loaded with features, and it has a competitive driving range. Moreover, most of the problems with the VF8 could likely be fixed with over-the-air (OTA) software updates.

As it stands now, though, I'd be embarrassed to look a customer in the eye when handing over the keys to this vehicle. I've driven camouflaged prototypes that were far closer to production-ready than the in-production VF8.




Basic Functions Don't Work Reliably


A lot of car reviewing is subjective and based on experience, preference, and understanding of the target customer, but a significant part of it is objective fact. I may not like the way a turn signal sounds, but I expect it to work every time I use it. One of the VF8s at the launch event couldn't do that. Similarly, multiple VF8s (including our test vehicle, which had fewer than 1,300 miles on the odometer) had HVAC systems that would only blow cold air when set below 80 degrees and only blow hot air when set above 80, but never warm or cool air regardless of whether manual or automatic climate was selected. Another VF8 would reset the climate to 80 degrees every time the car was powered off and back on.

Climate control wasn't the only malfunctioning system on our test vehicle. The embedded navigation system would display a map that jerked around on screen but was otherwise nonfunctional; it was always "offline" regardless of location. Blind-spot monitoring was also functionally useless on our vehicle. Occasionally, it would work while stopped if another vehicle next to us was moving through our blind spot, illuminating both a light on the door mirror and a graphic on the Tesla-like single dashboard screen. Most of the time, though, it didn't do anything.





Features That Do Work Need Work

Myriad other systems on the car did work, but in suboptimal ways. It starts the moment you get in and continues until you get out. Sit down in the driver's seat, and the screens come on, but no functions work until you buckle your seat belt and put your foot on the brake. So no listening to the radio or turning on the fan without your seat belt on.

The steering wheel adjustments are enabled on the single tabletlike screen in the center of the dashboard and easy enough to find with the steering wheel icon. Good luck finding door mirror and sunroof controls, though. Turns out you have to tap the mirrors or sunroof on the top-down picture of the car to bring up those screens. You can also control the sunroof and other features like the climate control with the voice assistant, if it works. Some journalists reported it worked but took forever to process commands. Others would watch it correctly type out everything you just said on the screen then inform you it didn't understand.

Put the VF8 in reverse to back out of a spot, and the whole car shudders violently. The parking brake doesn't release until you step on the accelerator, and once you do, there's no hold function, so you'd better keep Creep mode engaged so it's always sending power to the motors. Disable Creep, and the car will roll away in gear. I nearly rolled backward into another car at an intersection like someone learning to drive stick.

Once you're off and going, you find the long list of advanced driver aids to be a mixed bag at best. The adaptive cruise control and lane-centering steering assist work shockingly well but also have no apparent safeguards. They can be activated on any road at any time, and there appears to be no functional driver monitoring. The car never once warned me to put my hands back on the wheel, and covering the driver-facing camera behind the steering wheel did nothing. This is exactly the kind of thing that's made Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self Driving Beta technologies so controversial and potentially dangerous.

At least, that was our experience. Another car in the group did actually warn the driver to put their hands back on the wheel but did so while the steering assistance system was turned off and while the driver was, in fact, holding the wheel.

That's if you have the patience to leave the driver aids on, though. The steering assistance in our test car threw so many screaming false alarms and messages about having to provide "emergency steering assistance" when A) there was no emergency, and B) it wasn't actually doing any steering that I finally just turned off the whole system.



The speed limit warning system is equally obnoxious. Fully engaged, it beeps wildly every time you exceed the speed limit or your set variance by 1 mph. You can turn that off, but you can't turn off the beeps that ring out every time the speed limit changes as you drive down the road. (And it took us a while to figure out what those noises were about.) Oh, and when you turn off the exceeded speed limit warning, it puts a yellow triangle and exclamation point on the screen for the rest of the drive that looks like a much more serious alert.

Adjusting your speed is another matter entirely. Our car defaulted to Normal drive mode, High regenerative braking, and Creep mode on. Seems fine, but the accelerator pedal tuning had other ideas. Barely touch the pedal, and the car leaps forward, but lay into it, and there's a pause followed by a slow build of power. Let off the accelerator, and there's a jerk the other way as the regenerative braking kicks in ungracefully. Changing the regenerative braking to Low solved this problem, albeit only temporarily because the car forgets all your settings and restores the defaults every time you turn it off and back on.

Best to leave it in Normal drive mode regardless. Eco mode didn't appear to make any difference in our car, though colleagues reported a noticeable effect in theirs. They also had a usable Sport mode, but in our car, it was undrivable. Enabling Sport made the accelerator pedal so sensitive, breathing on it might cause you to hit triple-digit speeds.

Somewhere along the line, you might think the seat heaters and ventilation fitted to four out of the five seats might be the solution to the climate control issue mentioned earlier, but they're not as much help as they could be. The seat heaters get dangerously hot if left on too long, and the seat ventilation on our car was so weak it took several attempts to determine if it was working at all. On another car, they apparently worked great but were extremely loud, a poor trade-off.

Finally, reaching the end of your drive, you'll be beeped at a few more times for good measure. First, when you unbuckle your seat belt, even if you put the car in park first. Then a rear seat reminder that always comes back 30 seconds after you dismiss it. Sit in the car too long without touching the brake, and everything will shut down without the warnings or countdown most cars provide.




Software Updates Can't Fix Everything


Most of the problems could and hopefully will be solved with software patches delivered over the air or by VinFast's mobile service technicians. A lot of what I find unacceptable about this car could, in theory, be fixed very quickly by running an update. Some things, though, need to change back at the factory.

The shock absorber tuning, for example, needs a rethink. The ride is too firm for what's being pitched as a "premium" vehicle, and it has a bad tendency to pitch front to rear and back over bad pavement, leaving you constantly nodding your head. The shocks absorb the smallest bumps and cracks effectively, as everything bigger is felt through both the floor and seats. They handle lateral loads better, with little body roll that's well-controlled when you first turn the wheel, though it has a little trouble righting the car smoothly when you come out of a turn, especially after sharp steering inputs.

The seats don't help the handling situation, either. They're very firm and very flat, so you slide right out of them in anything more than gentle bend. The rear seat is almost a literal bench, the bottom and back completely devoid of contour and extremely thin. The rear headrests are fixed in place and impede your view out the already pinched rear window. I'd also be a remiss if I didn't mention the quality of the materials. The imitation leather and cheap interior plastics appear to be the exact same stuff GM was excoriated for using 15 years ago.

Outward visibility is otherwise quite good, which matters because the 360-degree camera system is terrible. The resolution is akin to security camera footage from the '90s, and the latency is as bad as online gaming in the same time period. Should you still find it useful anyway, it can be set to come on automatically below 9 mph. In practice, though, there's no rhyme or reason to when it does or doesn't come on, but once you exceed 9 mph, it goes off, and it's not coming back until you stop again.

Then there's the interior noise. The small amount of wind noise around the windshield header at freeway speeds is forgivable, as many cars struggle there. The tire and road noise, though, would make an old Honda blush. Not helping the noise issue was a sunroof that started creaking the moment I started driving and never stopped. The wipers are also oddly loud.

Build quality could also use work, though as Tesla has proved, it's not a deal breaker for many customers. Panel gaps inside and out were big and in places uneven. Our creaky sunroof was annoying but not a safety issue. Another car that had a broken third brake light whose lens had flown off at some point during the drive was more of a concern.




The Stuff We Did Like


It's not all bad, and there are even hints VinFast could really turn things around if it moves quickly. A number of the car's features are actually quite good, like the functionality of the adaptive cruise control and steering assistance. They're better than a number of major automakers in terms of how well they help drive the car.

The displays are also impressive. The head-up unit is bright, crisp, and full of useful information presented via pleasing graphics. Same for the one big tablet display, even if it has a few too many hidden menus. You do have to press any on-screen button right in the middle for your input to register, but the screen responds immediately when you hit them right. Wireless Apple CarPlay also worked well, though Google Maps did occasionally have trouble rendering the route on the dashboard screen. I also appreciated that any time the car had an issue, a surprisingly detailed message was displayed on the big screen, though sometimes not long enough to read fully.

As noted, the VF8 is pretty spacious. I'm not sure why it has a hump in the center of the rear floor when there's no driveshaft to clear, but it's not a deal-breaker. The cargo area is larger than you'd think, and it does have slightly more space under the hood than a Hyundai or Kia EV, even if the area is awkwardly shaped.

More than anything, the core brake tuning was shockingly good. Even Mercedes-Benz still struggles to blend regenerative and mechanical braking smoothly, but VinFast did an excellent job right out of the gate.

Even the battery and charging technology, which still trips up major automakers, seems solid. The range on this City Edition model is unimpressive at 207 miles for the Eco Version trim and 191 miles for the Plus Version (an improvement from previous estimates). The City Edition, though, is already out of production and replaced with the Standard Edition, which gets a new and improved battery chemistry. Standard Editions are making landfall in America as we speak, and the Eco Version trim will go a competitive 264 miles, followed by a Plus Version that goes 243. The 999 early adopters who all leased City Editions will be able to swap out their cars for Standard Editions after one year. Two hours of mixed driving saw the range drop surprisingly slowly, which is encouraging.

VinFast is claiming a somewhat slow but still competitive peak charging speed of 160 kW. Filling the 87-kWh battery from 10 percent to 70 percent takes 24 minutes or less, the company says, which is quite competitive and indicative of a good charge curve that doesn't fall off quickly as the battery fills. VinFast also gives you the option of a free home charger plus a $1,000 credit for installation or three years of unlimited free charging at affiliated public networks. You can also set up the car to charge automatically on participating public stations and bill through your VinFast account so you don't have to download all the charger apps.

Speaking of speed, every VF8 is dual-motor and all-wheel drive, with Eco Versions getting 348 hp and 369 lb-ft and Plus Versions getting 402 hp and 457 lb-ft. VinFast says that's good enough to hit 60 mph in 5.5 to 6.5 seconds, and the car felt plenty zippy on both city streets and the freeway.


For How Much?

The VF8's good qualities, though, don't come anywhere close to outweighing the bad, which isn't going to make its price easier to swallow. Currently, the vehicles are only available via lease, and VinFast's press materials disagree with themselves about the monthly payment, which is either $399 or $414 per month for the City Edition Eco Version and either $499 or $528 per month for the Plus Version.

Whenever VinFast decides to open up sales, the VF8 Standard Edition Eco Version will start at $49,000 and the VF8 Standard Edition Plus Version at $56,000, plus a currently unknown destination charge. Should all the problems be fully sorted by then, the VF8 could be competitive with the Tesla Model Y and Ford Mustang Mach-E—but that's an enormous "if."

Also, if you've heard of VinFast's innovative battery leasing plan and wondering what's up with that, best to forget about it. After several confusing attempts to get it off the ground, the company has put it on the back burner while it figures out how to make it a viable program.

Time's Running Out

The VF8, as it sits, is not ready for public consumption. Once word of these problems gets around, either from reviews like this one or owners or both, it's going to savage the company's reputation in America before anyone here has even heard of it. The company needs to move at lightning speed to fix the issues and appease the early adopters if it's to have any hope of succeeding in this market. More than anything, it has to fix them before the VF6, VF7, and VF9 EV SUVs arrive later this year.

As it happens, VinFast is really good at moving fast. The Vietnamese company has the money, resources, and culture to make things happen on timetables few others can match. It's going to take cubic dollars to fix the VF8 as quickly as it needs, but it's not impossible. In fact, it's imperative. The question is, will VinFast continue to throw money at this project? Or will it cut and run?






https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2023 ... ve-review/

Review: Don't buy the 2023 Vinfast VF 8 City Edition

GREEN CAR REPORTS MAY 12, 2023

In April of last year Green Car Reports went to Vietnam for an early preview of the Vinfast VF 8 prototype. After a quick spin on a test track, it was obvious the mid-size electric SUV needed some serious time in the oven before it might be fully ready for U.S. consumers.

After just over 365 days of additional baking, the knife still isn’t coming out clean.


The first thing I notice when I open the door of the VF 8 is the seating material. It’s a faux-leather that does a nice job visually of mimicking the real thing, but already the driver’s seat shows creasing and general wear and tear. The odometer is reading less than 1,000 miles and I can’t imagine what these seats will look like at 20,000 miles.

The next thing that draws my attention is the plastic lever to raise and lower my seat. I notice it because it has broken off in my hand. It goes from bad to worse, as I realize that all the driver-assist safety features on my tester—blind-spot monitors, automatic emergency braking, traffic sign recognition, active lane control—are inoperable and require servicing.

“And these are the production cars,” I think out loud. “The ones that will be delivered to customers?”

Vinfast was founded in 2017 as a traditional ICE automaker, but it pivoted to EVs in 2021. Amazingly, the company had a drivable prototype by 2022. In a world where legacy automakers take five or more years to introduce a new model, that is an insanely quick timeline.

That timeline will be its downfall.








2023 Vinfast VF 8 City Edition

Let’s get some specs out of the way, shall we? The City Edition, which is the first version due to be delivered in significant numbers on U.S. shores, looks just like the standard VF 8—more on that in a minute—and is offered in Eco and Plus trims. The difference is all in the battery and charging abilities. The standard car’s 87.7-kwh (usable) battery is replaced by the City Edition’s slightly smaller 82-kwh pack.

Both trims are all-wheel drive, but the Eco pushes out 348 horsepower and 368 pound-feet of torque and has 207 miles of EPA range. The Plus trim weighs 132 pounds more, and it goes bigger on power, at 402 ponies and 457 pound-feet of twist, clocking in with an EPA range of 191 miles.

The liquid-cooled battery pack contains 1,175 lithium-ion nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) cylindrical cells from supplier Samsung SDI. It can accept a peak DC fast-charging power of right around 160 kw, according to Vinfast, enough to go from 10-70% state of charge in 24 minutes or so. If you’re charging at home with a 48-amp Vinfast home charger, it will go the full 11 kw or so for what would add up to a full charge in less than eight hours.



2023 Vinfast VF 8 City Edition

VF 8 performance


Thanks to a brisk sport mode, the Plus scoots from zero to 62 miles per hour in 5.5 seconds. The acceleration doesn’t necessarily make my tummy do flip-flops, but it’s satisfying enough. Expect the Eco trim to be a second slower.

Vinfast partnered with Pininfarina to design the VF 8, but don’t expect classic Italian styling. Sure, the rear looks great with its segmented tail lights and swooping light bar that extends the width of the rear hatch, but the front is a whole different story. The headlamps and daytime running lights look like they are from two different vehicles and just plunked on top of each other. They are definitely giving me Nissan Juke vibes.







2023 Vinfast VF 8


Good design may be subjective but good materials are not. There are plenty of hard, chintzy plastics inside the VF 8, especially on the door handles, and the gloss black surrounding the cupholders is already showing scratches. However, the door sills are nicely padded, as is the dash. The door pockets are pretty deep and there is a closable storage cubby to the left of the steering wheel. Unfortunately, the seats are as overstuffed as I am on all-you-can-eat cookie day at Mrs. Fields. They are hard and unyielding, refusing to conform to my own contours. A road trip in this would be a chore.

Now that Vinfast has put me in a car with a fully-functioning suite of driver-assist features, I am off. The gear selector is laid out as a column of push-buttons. It’s an odd choice as many EVs put it on the column stalk, but whatever. You do you, Vinfast. There is no gauge cluster, just the center screen and a head-up display. Maxed out on brightness I can see the information on the display through my polarized sunglasses, but just barely.



2023 Vinfast VF 8 City Edition

Vinfast VF 8 driving impressions

Driving the thing isn’t the worst experience I’ve ever had behind the wheel of a car—that will always be reserved for the Fiat 500L—but I’ve definitely had better. The suspension is a bit soft, there is plenty of body roll through the turns and it’s got more squeaks and whistles than a fan boy at a Taylor Swift concert. The brake pedal has at least a half-inch of play at the top and I feel like I don’t know how much pressure I should apply to stop the car appropriately. I’ve never described a braking feel as numb before, but here we are. Over broken pavement the cabin noise, vibration, and harshness hit highs—and a frequency that hurts my admittedly sensitive ears.

The steering, however, passes muster with me. It’s on the heavy side, which I like. There isn’t much feedback but this isn’t supposed to be a sports car and the quick ratio makes up for it.

There is no one-pedal driving here, but there are two levels of brake regen. The strongest setting will slow the car down appreciably, leaving it to creep at 5 mph or so until the brake pedal is applied.



Vinfast VF 8

After talking to other journalists, I gain the impression that my first car wasn’t the outlier, and it seems quality control is all over the map. One had a car that pulled deftly to the right. Someone else’s car rolled backwards on a hill. Others talked about finicky turn signals and some complained about climate control systems that were Canada cold or Sahara hot, despite settings. Our tester didn’t have its navigation enabled nor would it load the karaoke feature I was promised in the press release.

And the thing loves to ding. It will ding for any driving infraction, perceived or otherwise. I turn off the active lane control and speed warning, but it still gives an audible for every traffic sign we pass. Some alerts also push a visual cue on the center screen, but they come and go so fast I can’t read them.

I’m almost relieved when this car also throws a fault code, also on all of its active-safety tech.

Yep, I tried two Vinfast V 8 City Edition cars and both bricked their driver-assist systems. Mind you, the cars were both still drivable, but with a big, fat Service Required icon.

Vinfast VF 8 range, efficiency, and charging



VinFast VF 8 Prototype


Vinfast VF 8 interior and cargo space

The interface is one of the high points of the experience, with an infotainment system that is well-organized and super-easy to use. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are here, and the screen responds quickly with no noticeable lag. Yes, I have to be very precise in tapping those icons, but at least I’m not waiting around for the next screen to appear.

There is plenty of room for folks in the rear seat, even those well over six feet tall. The rear seats also recline a bit, taking some pressure off passengers’ rear ends as they tolerate the hard-packed surface.



2023 Vinfast VF 8

There is a bit of a problem when it comes to overall utility, however. The VF 8 has 13.2 cubic feet of space behind the rear seats, expanding to 48.4 cubes when those seats are folded down. There is room in the frunk for a backpack and some smaller items. The similarly-sized Ford Mustang Mach-E makes much better use of interior space at right around 30 and 60 cubic feet respectively, with a frunk that’s nearly twice as big. The Kia EV6 does better as well with 24 cubic feet of space, expanding to 50 cubes.

Vinfast offers an excellent warranty of ten years or 125,000 miles for the VF 8 and a 10-year/unlimited mileage warranty for the battery. There is also 24/7 roadside assistance. The company has walked back on its previous promises to lease the battery to consumers, but it says that might still be an option in the future should consumers want it.



2023 Vinfast VF 8 City Edition

The 2023 Vinfast VF 8 City Edition starts at $50,200 including $1,200 for destination. However, it is currently only available as a lease and only in California, starting at $414 per month. That’s a pretty low lease price for sure, but this car is not ready to be delivered to consumers.

During my drive I felt like I was driving a pre-production model. The ride quality needs tuning, some of the electronics systems are a mess, and the materials could use a bit of an upgrade. Why Vinfast is intent on rushing this car to market is beyond me. If it would just slow down a bit, take the time to fix the problems we all experienced, it might actually have a decent car. As it stands now, the VF 8 City Edition will do nothing except earn Vinfast a bad reputation, one that might take decades to shake.

—Emme Hall

Xe điện VF8 của VinFast quá kém: chuyên gia thử xe ở Mỹ kết luận

RFA
13-5-2023



Dòng xe VF8 của VinFast triển lãm ở Las Vegas hồi tháng 1/2023
AFP

Xe điện VF8 của VinFast chưa thể sử dụng thương mại như kế hoạch mà hãng này đang xúc tiến tại thị trường Hoa Kỳ.

Một số mạng báo chuyên về công nghiệp ô tô tại Hoa Kỳ như MotorTrend, Jalopnik, Insideevs vào ngày 12/5 dẫn kết luận của những người trải nghiệm rồi đánh giá xe hơi như vừa nêu đối với dòng xe điện VF8 của VinFast đang nhập vào thị trường Mỹ.

Những khiếm khuyết kỹ thuật được nêu ra là hệ thống báo hiệu sang trái-sang phải không ổn định, hệ thống hỗ trợ lái xe nâng cao (ADAS) và dừng xe gây buồn nôn cho người lái, xe rung lắc dù chạy ở tốc độ bình thường…Những người chuyên lái thử nghiệm để đánh giá cho rằng họ không hề có ấn tượng gì đối với dòng xe điện SUV VF8 của VinFast.

Theo họ, giá bán một chiếc VF8 tại thị trường Hoa Kỳ là trên 50 ngàn USD; và trong thực tế xe đã giao cho một số người mua để sử dụng.

Một số điểm được đánh giá tích cực cho dòng xe VF8 của VinFast mà những người trải nghiệm để đánh giá nêu ra là nội thất rộng rãi, màu sắc bắt mắt như hai màu ‘cam bình mình”, ‘xanh đậm nước biển’.

Trong khi đó, cũng vào ngày 12/5, VinFast thông báo lô xe điện VF8 thứ hai gồm 1.879 chiếc đã cập cảng Benicia, bang California, Hoa Kỳ. Trong số này có 1.098 xe sẽ được giao cho khách hàng tại Mỹ; số còn lại sẽ được chuyển sang Canada.

Lô thứ nhất chuyển đến Hoa Kỳ là vào cuối năm 2022.