VinFast went from nothing to building their own EVs in just 7 short years. Proton meanwhile…

So a little while ago, this writer had spent a couple of days Ho Chi Minh. And in between the amazing food and rich history, one car-related thing that that consistently caught this writer’s eyes were just the various Vinfasts that were around the city.

And it was while admiring a rather sleek VF8 parked by the side of the road one day that a rather Malaysian thought popped up in this writer’s head: Vinfast’s current success could have been Proton’s story.

Now just providing a bit of background on Vinfast to the uninitiated first, Vinfast was founded in 2017 by Vingroup, one of the largest conglomerates in Vietnam. Some of the more notable models worth a mention from its lineup include the VF8, a Pininfarina-styled all-electric SUV that was the company’s first exported model, and the VF3, a two-door boxy Suzuki Jimny-esque e-SUV.

But the most pertinent bit to this story here is that Vinfast had went from making cars based on old BMWs, to a whole lineup of self-developed EVs in just 7 short years. Some of which have even made it out of Vietnam, and to as far the perennially tough auto market of the United States!

Also, it is worth highlighting that it is not just cars VinFast makes, as the Vietnamese marque has its own range of all-electric motorcycles too. Oh, it manufactures e-buses as well.

This is all in contrast to Proton meanwhile, which in a span of nearly 40 years, has basically gone from making rebadges of Mitsubishis to now churning out Geely products with a roaring lion badge glued on either end. And hence you got to ask how we as Malaysians can even have the gall to say Malaysia boleh with a straight face from this…

BUT…

Now of course, the easiest retort to VinFast’s success story against Proton’s current state is that VinFast is a subsidiary of one of the largest conglomerates in Vietnam. Hence they technically have the resources available to dump astronomical amounts of money into making this venture work.

And just to quantify how much the money is involved here, its parent company had pledged in November to loan VinFast as much as $1.38 billion (RM 6.2 billion) to help the company break even by the end of 2026. Vingroup founder Pham Nhat Vuong meanwhile also pledged an additional $1.97 billion (RM 8.86 billion) to keep the company going.

It has to be said though that retort of resources propping up the company rings a bit hollow when considering that Proton was founded as a pet project by one of our former prime ministers, and there is beyond a shadow of a doubt that the roaring lion has been offered much more than just financial support (of which there presumably more than what has been made public too) from our nation’s coffers to keep it chugging along for all these years.

A much more reasonable retort to the contrasting fortunes of VinFast and Proton on the other hand is actually the simple fact that it is still very much early days for the Vietnamese automaker. Remember here that Proton also had its glorious early period too, where our national automaker was actually making similar waves by exporting its cars to many developed nation like the UK and Australia.

In fact, it could be argued that Proton may have even seen better early success than VinFast. That is as while it is acknowledged that models like the original Saga and Wira were rebadged Mitsubishis, period overseas reviews however were quite praiseworthy about how it is just a cheap yet reasonably good car.

The same however could not be said for VinFast, as while its VF8 was not a rebadge of anything, North American reviews of this e-SUV at least were absolutely scathing. Car and Driver for example concluded its review of the VF8 with the damning statement of: “What would this car have to cost to convince would-be buyers to take a chance on a complete unknown with immediately obvious flaws?”

For what it’s worth too, Proton also had a crack at building its own cars for a while during the dawn of this millennium, with its own in-house engines too. Going it alone however had basically eventually ruined the company (both reputationally and financially), and is pretty much the reason why it is now resigned to rebadging Geely products…

So it really is perhaps to easy to now look at VinFast and see how great they are doing right now, because this may potentially be more of a mirage than a miracle story of a successful South East Asian automaker.