VinFast will soon begin building a $4 billion elective SUV facility in Moncure.
The plant is expected to bring 7,500 jobs in five years.
The Vietnamese-based company is stopping the production of gas-powered cars and going entirely electric.
WRAL News got a behind-the-scenes tour of VinFast’s general assembly shop in Vietnam. An assembly line showed how machines and crews put together a VF8 electric SUV, like those VinFast is expected to produce by July 2024 in North Carolina.
VinFast SUV buyer on getting to tour Vietnam plant: ‘I want to see what I’m investing into’
VinFast’s factory in Vietnam can produce 38 cars per hour through an almost entirely automated body shop. There are 1,200 robots welding 6,000 pieces together to build the form of each vehicle.
VinFast said it is producing 250,000 cars per year at the 3-year-old Vietnam facility.
The facility’s manufacturing director came from General Motors.
It takes 450 workers in the shop WRAL News toured to make sure the technology works along the assembly line. One of the lines stretches nearly 2.5 miles as each vehicle is outfitted with 3,000 components from the interior to the engine.
Battery cells are sorted and assembled in an automated process. Then, they are checked by the human eye.
VinFast plans to build a battery production facility in North Carolina like the one in Vietnam as part of the second phase of development here.
The Vietnam manufacturing facility is a glimpse of what’s to come on for the tree-covered megasite about 30 minutes outside Raleigh.
In Vietnam, reclaimed swamp land in the port city of Hai Phong is now covered in roads connecting the workshops across more than 800 acres. While it feels massive, it’s less than half the size of the footprint VinFast plans in Chatham County.
Chatham County will juggle job growth, growing pains as VinFast builds $4 billion SUV plant
