The VinFast VF8: A Sporty Mid-Size SUV with a Rich History and Ambitious Plans

I really like the look of this car, it's sporty even with just the front license plate bracket here. But I know regulations require it. To me, it looks nice and sporty - even down where the air intakes are. You can see it's got some sports car heritage, designed by people who really know sports cars from a size standpoint. It's a pretty big mid-size SUV, on the larger side of the category. The charge port lives in the front left, which is kind of weird for both EVS and gas cars - either have it on the back left or the right.

At least this is an easy spot to have, it's really nice looking and clean. It looks really good from the back and when it lights up, especially when it's parked, you can see the V shape come down into the logo. The design starts from the back, so you've got the VIN fast logo and the lights come out from it, and then all the body lines kind of extend from there. But it's nice - it's a larger sized car to me, it's bigger than a Model Y and bigger than the Maki.

VinFast is a foreign company, spun off from VinGroup, which is the largest conglomerate of companies in Vietnam. In 2017, VinFast was spun off, and they established their manufacturing complex, starting to build cars in a crazy fast turnaround. One year later, in 2018, they revealed some internal combustion cars. Then, in 2021, they announced their first three EVS - the E34, vf8, and vf9. In 2022, they revealed a full lineup of cars at CES, and in 2023, the first VinFast EVs went to customers in North America.

In just six years, from 2017 to 2023, VinFast has gone from "we're a company" to "here's some keys to actually drive our cars". The VF8 and vf9 models are priced between $49,000 and $56,000, depending on range and performance. But what sets VinFast apart is their commitment to standing behind their customers. They offer a 10-year, 125,000-mile warranty on the car, as well as a 10-year unlimited mile warranty on the battery. And for 10 years after you buy the car, they'll come to you for roadside assistance 24/7.

I'm reminded of the big switch that happened with Hyundai and Kia about 10 years ago, where they went from selling very inexpensive cars that weren't too reliable to one of the fastest-growing automotive brands offering luxury cars with incredible reliability and great technology. That process started with a 10-year warranty, which gave customers a sense of confidence that this was a purchase that could go with them for a very long time. There's a lot of echoes of that with what VinFast is doing.

Early reviews haven't blown anyone out of the water yet, but I think there's potential for a really good car and really good series of cars coming from VinFast. The vf8 isn't their first car - they've got several others in the pipeline, including a third-row model that will come to the US market over the next few years. Whether or not you want to take a wait-and-see approach or jump in on VinFast's EVS offerings, it's going to be up to you what you do with your purchasing dollars.

As someone who has been an early adopter of many EVs, I have tolerance for things like this. If you're looking to get a new car or a new EV over the next few years, keep an eye on VinFast - they're definitely one company worth watching.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthank you to Vin fast for sponsoring this video the EV market right now in the US is crowded you've got Tesla leading the charge and you've got the established automakers coming out with really capable EV options and then you still have startups coming onto the scene new companies that are trying to sell their cars and sell a vision of what they think Electric Mobility should be and could be you've got lucid and rivian and now you've got vinvast and they have a ton of money and they are using that money to start an automotive wrench they're calling it vinfast uh that started back in 2017 and now in 2023 they're actually delivering the first customer car and I had a chance to take a look at it in San Diego this a vf8 and I've got a lot to say about it before I get to vf8 and everything to talk about with this car and there is a lot I do want to thank you you sir madam are incredible and good humans have supported me for a very very long time before the Evie Market was even a thing uh it's a chance to say thank you I want to give you guys a chance to win 500 bucks just for being awesome leave me a comment down below to tell me something that you you dig about the vf8 tell me a dad joke just leave your social handle in the comment open to anyone in the world runner for 10 days all information needed will be in the description so full disclosure finfast offered to send me to San Diego take a look at their brand new vf8 city Edition now this video is sponsored vinfast had no editorial control over anything that was said here if you just Google vf8 you will see a lot of opinions I had a chance to drive this car for about two two and a half hours it is not perfect but it does have a lot of potential so everything here is based on my you know two three hours I spent with them hey guys so future John here uh actually today this video is going up we're kind of seeing the power for all cars of OTA updates there was a recall on all vfas that he needed to potentially go out causing a safety risk software update will fix it back to the video tech is the first thing I check out with a car I won't consider a car unless the tech is at least to my mind how good and there is a lot here so you've got a very familiar looking large Center screen it's 15.6 inches it seems heavily Tesla inspired here software is hard to do it was my biggest issue that I had with Lucid when I drove it I was not mad UI at all like any new car there was a learning curve but within 15 minutes I figured out how to use it I felt quick Zippy and relatively intuitive you've got Wireless car play and Android auto which is nice wireless charging pad you have 360 cameras here as well which is nice a ton of charging ports uh oddly two USB A's in front no USB type-c there is a type c in the back that was 90 Watts which is obviously a ton of power you have all your HVAC controls are on screen as far as temperature and that kind of stuff once you want to drive it you've got a that was a pretty cool looking gear selector you also have a physical volume knob as well uh which was pretty cool but obviously this car's got to drive right sitting still is is not why people are going to look to buy or lease this car the first leg of our Drive which is some normal roads I wanted to check out the customizable heads up display so it's color you can pick what shows on it you can also arrange where it is I drive with polarized sunglasses and that has never worked any heads-up display so same here I couldn't see it anyway but had I taken off my polarized prescription glasses I've been all able to enjoy the heads-up display for about 10 or 15 minutes before we did have a warning that it was overheating and needed to be turned off in all fairness I had the brightness turned all the way up so maybe that impacted the heat but that was an issue that I had in the car now this is where some of the reviews you may have read online come into play the common theme and the other opinions that I've read and watched were really kind of twofold were the big ones they talked a lot about excessive body roll and they talked about feeling disconnected from the road now I am not an automotive journalist I haven't been reviewing cars for 30 plus years I'm a guy who's been driving electric cars for a decade and happens to just love cars first it felt plenty Zippy uh 0-16 five and a half seconds and about 402 horsepower if you'd expect that from any electric car that's like the basis for EVS it should feel fast because of all of that in Sea torque and this it definitely did and I wasn't going fast around corners I did not feel the body roll my experience was definitely not what others uh had felt this was not a car I'm going to remember driving and tell my kids about it's also what I'm not going to get out of and think that was atrocious I thought it drove absolutely fine and if I was looking to get a car in this price point and it drove like this I would probably be pretty happy with it but the flip side of that comes down to their Ada system uh it'll get to level two at shipping it's got Lane keep and it's got adaptive cruise control which sounds fine while I didn't experience any body roll what I did experience was beeping seemingly every second pretty aggressive and while you're driving you can take advantage still takes advantage of level two even just to get a tick like this took multiple times because there's so much beeping it said I was in the left lanes and I was hitting the right lane marker or trying to Center me back in the middle uh it was the most sensitive system I have ever tested Allison I'm not the best driver in the world but I definitely don't need that much beeping happening at every single turn that I go on now I turned all those things off and it was fine for a while but when you turn the car back on all those things came back on again and all the beeping came on again I've never had that much beeping in a car it was like I was at a supermarket where the cashiers were competing for who could scan the most uh products at once it was a lot now that does to me seem like software that can be fixed and address you over their updates but at launch if I bought this car that would be incredibly tough pill to swallow until that OTA update comes that addresses that if there's one thing that's going to give people a pause about the vfa especially this one that we're driving the city Edition it's going to be range so from a just under 90 kilowatt hour pack depending on the drive mode you're in you can estimate to about 200 miles now if the city part of that car I figure that's totally fine but 200 miles does make things like road tripping potentially be an issue now they've tried to combat that you've got a Max charge rate of 260 kilowatts which is nice it should be able to give you a consistent charge rate of over 150 kilowatts which is relatively fast as well different versions of the car will be coming out that'll have more range the city versions coming first and the standard range is coming a bit later that'll offer more range that was my two hour ish Driving Experience it might have been different maybe I would have heard less beeps and boobs if I was just driving on a free whip they took us on a bunch of uh back roads which I don't think represented the car as well as it perhaps could have again I did not have the experience that others had or some people had with driving this car it drove like an absolutely fine car when I would not be mad at just from a driving perspective now perhaps if I drove it for five six seven eight hours that opinion would change one way or another uh but in that two three hours I thought the drive was fine but the the drive interior stuff is sort of just one part the exterior is another totally different equation with this car the design of any car is subjective I'd argue it's probably one of the most important factors about buying a car is how do things looks so Vin fast being sort of a new automotive company they went straight to the top for design they hired pinup Arena to design the car which has a very long history of Designing beautiful race cars for Ferrari they designed the Testarossa and you can see coming to some of the sports car like Heritage here which is kind of weird to say heritage from a company that's been around for only a few years but you can see it and like to me the design looks good this is kind of strange though it looks vastly different in person than it does in pictures I think this area in particular looks different in person than in pictures and pictures it kind of has maybe a bit of a almost a plasticky look it does not look like that in person at all I really like the look of the car I could probably do without the front license plate bracket here but you know regulations but to me it looks nice it looks sporty even down where the air intakes are kind of you can see it's got some sports car Heritage here were designed by people that really know sports cars from a size standpoint it's a pretty big mid-size SUV it's on the larger side of the category your charge port lives in the front left it's really kind of weird on EVS on gas cars either have your you know it's on the back left or the right on EVS it could be anywhere at least this is like a pretty easy spot to have in the front left but it's a really nice looking clean car uh it looks really good from the back and when it lights up especially when it's parked you can see the V kind of comes down into the logo at least to me the design starts from the back so you've got the VIN fast logo and the lights come out from it and then all the Body Lines kind of extend from there but it's nice it's a larger sized car to me it's bigger than a model Y and bigger than the Maki that gives you some kind of frame of reference for size foreign spun off from Vin group and Vin group it's the largest conglomerate of companies in Vietnam it is ginormous uh in 2017 was when Vin fast was spun off they established manufacturing complex sort of start building cars in a crazy fast turnaround one year later in 2018 they revealed some internal combustion cars in 2021 they announced their first three EVS so the E34 vf8 and vf9 in 2022 and it gave us a full lineup of cars actually at CES uh they've opened a bunch of service centers here in the U.S and in 2023 the first Vin fast EVS went to customers in North America so from 2017 2023 in six years they went from we're a company to now here's some keys to actually drive our cars the different versions here of the vf8 and pricing kind of ranges from 49 000 to 56 000 depending on range and performance so that seven thousand dollar spread in that spread there is a lot of us very established really viable options for EVS you've got the Mustang Mach e you've got the Kia ev6 the Hyundai Ionix five uh of course you've got the model y as well and a few others in there so the vfa is coming in at a price point where there is a lot of competitors in order to be successful you have to find ways to stand out so I think rightfully so there are some nerves and trepidation about Vin fast this is a company that has a lot of money and it's committed to being here for a long time and they are giving early adopters sort of the confidence they are going to stand behind their cars they're offering a 10-year 125 000 mile warranty on the car and then a 10-year unlimited mile warranty on the battery and then for 10 years after you buy the car they'll come to you for roadside assistance 24 7. and sort of throughout the whole process of of taking out the VIN fast I'm reminded of sort of the real big switch that happened with Hyundai Kia about 10 years ago where they went from a car company that sold very inexpensive cars that were not that reliable to now one of the fastest growing Automotive brands that offers luxury cars with Incredible reliability and great technology that process started with that 10-year warranty with them standing behind their cars they give customers sort of a sense of confidence that this is a purchase that could go with them for a very long time and there's a lot of Echoes of that with what vinfast is doing here I cannot see the future I don't have a crystal ball the early reviews here have not blown anyone out of the water but I do think there is the potential for a really good car and really good series of cars coming from Vin fast vf8 is not the first car the vf9 is coming which will be a third row and several others will come to the U.S market over the next few years there's a lot of potential here with these cars whether or not you want to take a wait and see approach or jump in or or not it's going to be up to you what you do with your purchasing dollars I do think though there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about what vinfast is doing I think somebody who has been a very early adopter of a lot of EVS I have tolerance for things like that you may you may not at the very least the fastest company you should keep an eye on you're looking to get a new car or a new EV over the next few yearsthank you to Vin fast for sponsoring this video the EV market right now in the US is crowded you've got Tesla leading the charge and you've got the established automakers coming out with really capable EV options and then you still have startups coming onto the scene new companies that are trying to sell their cars and sell a vision of what they think Electric Mobility should be and could be you've got lucid and rivian and now you've got vinvast and they have a ton of money and they are using that money to start an automotive wrench they're calling it vinfast uh that started back in 2017 and now in 2023 they're actually delivering the first customer car and I had a chance to take a look at it in San Diego this a vf8 and I've got a lot to say about it before I get to vf8 and everything to talk about with this car and there is a lot I do want to thank you you sir madam are incredible and good humans have supported me for a very very long time before the Evie Market was even a thing uh it's a chance to say thank you I want to give you guys a chance to win 500 bucks just for being awesome leave me a comment down below to tell me something that you you dig about the vf8 tell me a dad joke just leave your social handle in the comment open to anyone in the world runner for 10 days all information needed will be in the description so full disclosure finfast offered to send me to San Diego take a look at their brand new vf8 city Edition now this video is sponsored vinfast had no editorial control over anything that was said here if you just Google vf8 you will see a lot of opinions I had a chance to drive this car for about two two and a half hours it is not perfect but it does have a lot of potential so everything here is based on my you know two three hours I spent with them hey guys so future John here uh actually today this video is going up we're kind of seeing the power for all cars of OTA updates there was a recall on all vfas that he needed to potentially go out causing a safety risk software update will fix it back to the video tech is the first thing I check out with a car I won't consider a car unless the tech is at least to my mind how good and there is a lot here so you've got a very familiar looking large Center screen it's 15.6 inches it seems heavily Tesla inspired here software is hard to do it was my biggest issue that I had with Lucid when I drove it I was not mad UI at all like any new car there was a learning curve but within 15 minutes I figured out how to use it I felt quick Zippy and relatively intuitive you've got Wireless car play and Android auto which is nice wireless charging pad you have 360 cameras here as well which is nice a ton of charging ports uh oddly two USB A's in front no USB type-c there is a type c in the back that was 90 Watts which is obviously a ton of power you have all your HVAC controls are on screen as far as temperature and that kind of stuff once you want to drive it you've got a that was a pretty cool looking gear selector you also have a physical volume knob as well uh which was pretty cool but obviously this car's got to drive right sitting still is is not why people are going to look to buy or lease this car the first leg of our Drive which is some normal roads I wanted to check out the customizable heads up display so it's color you can pick what shows on it you can also arrange where it is I drive with polarized sunglasses and that has never worked any heads-up display so same here I couldn't see it anyway but had I taken off my polarized prescription glasses I've been all able to enjoy the heads-up display for about 10 or 15 minutes before we did have a warning that it was overheating and needed to be turned off in all fairness I had the brightness turned all the way up so maybe that impacted the heat but that was an issue that I had in the car now this is where some of the reviews you may have read online come into play the common theme and the other opinions that I've read and watched were really kind of twofold were the big ones they talked a lot about excessive body roll and they talked about feeling disconnected from the road now I am not an automotive journalist I haven't been reviewing cars for 30 plus years I'm a guy who's been driving electric cars for a decade and happens to just love cars first it felt plenty Zippy uh 0-16 five and a half seconds and about 402 horsepower if you'd expect that from any electric car that's like the basis for EVS it should feel fast because of all of that in Sea torque and this it definitely did and I wasn't going fast around corners I did not feel the body roll my experience was definitely not what others uh had felt this was not a car I'm going to remember driving and tell my kids about it's also what I'm not going to get out of and think that was atrocious I thought it drove absolutely fine and if I was looking to get a car in this price point and it drove like this I would probably be pretty happy with it but the flip side of that comes down to their Ada system uh it'll get to level two at shipping it's got Lane keep and it's got adaptive cruise control which sounds fine while I didn't experience any body roll what I did experience was beeping seemingly every second pretty aggressive and while you're driving you can take advantage still takes advantage of level two even just to get a tick like this took multiple times because there's so much beeping it said I was in the left lanes and I was hitting the right lane marker or trying to Center me back in the middle uh it was the most sensitive system I have ever tested Allison I'm not the best driver in the world but I definitely don't need that much beeping happening at every single turn that I go on now I turned all those things off and it was fine for a while but when you turn the car back on all those things came back on again and all the beeping came on again I've never had that much beeping in a car it was like I was at a supermarket where the cashiers were competing for who could scan the most uh products at once it was a lot now that does to me seem like software that can be fixed and address you over their updates but at launch if I bought this car that would be incredibly tough pill to swallow until that OTA update comes that addresses that if there's one thing that's going to give people a pause about the vfa especially this one that we're driving the city Edition it's going to be range so from a just under 90 kilowatt hour pack depending on the drive mode you're in you can estimate to about 200 miles now if the city part of that car I figure that's totally fine but 200 miles does make things like road tripping potentially be an issue now they've tried to combat that you've got a Max charge rate of 260 kilowatts which is nice it should be able to give you a consistent charge rate of over 150 kilowatts which is relatively fast as well different versions of the car will be coming out that'll have more range the city versions coming first and the standard range is coming a bit later that'll offer more range that was my two hour ish Driving Experience it might have been different maybe I would have heard less beeps and boobs if I was just driving on a free whip they took us on a bunch of uh back roads which I don't think represented the car as well as it perhaps could have again I did not have the experience that others had or some people had with driving this car it drove like an absolutely fine car when I would not be mad at just from a driving perspective now perhaps if I drove it for five six seven eight hours that opinion would change one way or another uh but in that two three hours I thought the drive was fine but the the drive interior stuff is sort of just one part the exterior is another totally different equation with this car the design of any car is subjective I'd argue it's probably one of the most important factors about buying a car is how do things looks so Vin fast being sort of a new automotive company they went straight to the top for design they hired pinup Arena to design the car which has a very long history of Designing beautiful race cars for Ferrari they designed the Testarossa and you can see coming to some of the sports car like Heritage here which is kind of weird to say heritage from a company that's been around for only a few years but you can see it and like to me the design looks good this is kind of strange though it looks vastly different in person than it does in pictures I think this area in particular looks different in person than in pictures and pictures it kind of has maybe a bit of a almost a plasticky look it does not look like that in person at all I really like the look of the car I could probably do without the front license plate bracket here but you know regulations but to me it looks nice it looks sporty even down where the air intakes are kind of you can see it's got some sports car Heritage here were designed by people that really know sports cars from a size standpoint it's a pretty big mid-size SUV it's on the larger side of the category your charge port lives in the front left it's really kind of weird on EVS on gas cars either have your you know it's on the back left or the right on EVS it could be anywhere at least this is like a pretty easy spot to have in the front left but it's a really nice looking clean car uh it looks really good from the back and when it lights up especially when it's parked you can see the V kind of comes down into the logo at least to me the design starts from the back so you've got the VIN fast logo and the lights come out from it and then all the Body Lines kind of extend from there but it's nice it's a larger sized car to me it's bigger than a model Y and bigger than the Maki that gives you some kind of frame of reference for size foreign spun off from Vin group and Vin group it's the largest conglomerate of companies in Vietnam it is ginormous uh in 2017 was when Vin fast was spun off they established manufacturing complex sort of start building cars in a crazy fast turnaround one year later in 2018 they revealed some internal combustion cars in 2021 they announced their first three EVS so the E34 vf8 and vf9 in 2022 and it gave us a full lineup of cars actually at CES uh they've opened a bunch of service centers here in the U.S and in 2023 the first Vin fast EVS went to customers in North America so from 2017 2023 in six years they went from we're a company to now here's some keys to actually drive our cars the different versions here of the vf8 and pricing kind of ranges from 49 000 to 56 000 depending on range and performance so that seven thousand dollar spread in that spread there is a lot of us very established really viable options for EVS you've got the Mustang Mach e you've got the Kia ev6 the Hyundai Ionix five uh of course you've got the model y as well and a few others in there so the vfa is coming in at a price point where there is a lot of competitors in order to be successful you have to find ways to stand out so I think rightfully so there are some nerves and trepidation about Vin fast this is a company that has a lot of money and it's committed to being here for a long time and they are giving early adopters sort of the confidence they are going to stand behind their cars they're offering a 10-year 125 000 mile warranty on the car and then a 10-year unlimited mile warranty on the battery and then for 10 years after you buy the car they'll come to you for roadside assistance 24 7. and sort of throughout the whole process of of taking out the VIN fast I'm reminded of sort of the real big switch that happened with Hyundai Kia about 10 years ago where they went from a car company that sold very inexpensive cars that were not that reliable to now one of the fastest growing Automotive brands that offers luxury cars with Incredible reliability and great technology that process started with that 10-year warranty with them standing behind their cars they give customers sort of a sense of confidence that this is a purchase that could go with them for a very long time and there's a lot of Echoes of that with what vinfast is doing here I cannot see the future I don't have a crystal ball the early reviews here have not blown anyone out of the water but I do think there is the potential for a really good car and really good series of cars coming from Vin fast vf8 is not the first car the vf9 is coming which will be a third row and several others will come to the U.S market over the next few years there's a lot of potential here with these cars whether or not you want to take a wait and see approach or jump in or or not it's going to be up to you what you do with your purchasing dollars I do think though there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about what vinfast is doing I think somebody who has been a very early adopter of a lot of EVS I have tolerance for things like that you may you may not at the very least the fastest company you should keep an eye on you're looking to get a new car or a new EV over the next few years\n"