Since its debut on the Nasdaq, VinFast has a market cap that's bigger than $F and $GM despite not having sold many cars overall. While $RIVN and $LCID have seen their valuations plunge immensely since their public debut, the euphoria behind VinFast seems to come from investors that forget how Rivian and Lucid shares are performing.

This immense optimism behind VinFast's future seems to stem from the idea that the Company is fast charging Vietnam's ambitions in becoming an automotive giant in the future. The level of optimism behind VinFast's high stock performance isn't the same as the optimism that $NIO nor $XPEV nor $LI had when they went public on US exchanges. While people called Nio the "Tesla of China", people didn't give the same attention to Xpeng or Li Auto. The success of those three homegrown automakers coincides with the fact that more automakers have been outsourcing automobile production to China these past couple years.

While Vietnam is starting to gain a bigger share of the mature electronics manufacturing pie thanks to the "offshoring from Tesla" trend, the jump from electronics to automotive production seems fast. With a near 0% unemployment rate, I wonder how VinFast finds the labor that it needs to produce automobiles. According to CNBC, VinFast is building a factory in North Carolina and estimates that it can produce 150,000 cars in the first phase of production. VinFast could also be a customer of Foxconn's upcoming automobile manufacturing service. If VinFast wants to expand automotive production, it needs to go to places with more abundant labor pools, like Africa.

In 2022, VinFast sold 24,000 cars globally. For perspective, Rivian produced 24,337 and delivered 20,332. While Rivian receives praise for the quality of vehicles they provide consumers, VinFast is plagued with quality issues. As much as the quality issues dent VinFast's reputation with consumers, when looking back, South Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia were also known for having quality issues and over time, they overcame those production issues and are succeeding in the US automotive market. If those two automakers can recover from a bad start, there is reason to be optimistic that VinFast can accomplish something similar.

If I can sum up my prediction on what happens to VinFast, I'll say it looks no different than what we've seen with Lucid and Rivian. Hopefully it doesn't get worse like Lordstown, Faraday Future, and Canoo.