EV startup VinFast to cut U.S. jobs

Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast is cutting its workforce in the United States, the company said on Monday, amid a restructuring in its major overseas market as the startup grapples with a stalled shipment of its first cars and prepares for a potential stock listing.

The Vietnamese company, a subsidiary of conglomerate Vingroup, has been moving to expand in the U.S., where it hopes to compete with existing automakers.

A VinFast spokesperson said headcount would not shrink in Vietnam where most of the company’s staff, including its factory and engineering operations, are located.

It was not immediately clear how many jobs the U.S. restructuring would affect.

VinFast said it had hired about 150 people in the U.S., many in sales, support and distribution roles as part of a model that bypasses traditional dealerships.

The company, which started operations in 2019, said last week that it would delay its first batch of deliveries to the U.S. to the second half of February.

In late January, VinFast said it was merging its U.S. and Canadian operations into a single business unit. It did not announce any job cuts at the time.

VinFast said in a statement to Reuters it was looking to “streamline” North American operations and would work with third-parties to “increase the quality and speed of customer service.”

VinFast managers had been told to prepare lists that could cut up to 30 percent of staff in headquarters operations in Vietnam for review by the company’s founder and chairman, Pham Nhat Vuong, on Monday, two people with knowledge of those discussions said.

VinFast said there would be no net workforce reduction in Vietnam. “We review employee’s quality of work frequently and dismiss those who do not meet our requirements,” it said. “We will recruit new replacements.”

The company had shipped its first batch of 999 EVs to the U.S. in November and had targeted the first delivery of those VF8 crossovers in December.

But the vehicles have been held at a port on the U.S. West Coast while the company works on software updates, it said.

VinFast has expanded staffing over the past several years as it targets growth in the market for EVs in Europe and North America.