The rubber meets the road for an electric SUV that’s not on the road anywhere yet.

WRAL Techwire got behind the wheel of the VinFast VF8 on a closed course winding through the island mountainside in Nha Trang.

The instructor Anh showed off the technology controlled through a nearly 16-inch screen

“It is integrated with a lot of smart features,” said Anh.

and voice recognition. You can talk to your car.

VinFast is moving ahead at its own high speed to get the VF8 on the road in the US by the end of the year.

Those will come from the factory in Vietnam, before it becomes one of two electric SUVs the company plans to build in North Carolina.

It’s the 5-year-old automaker’s debut outside its home country.

We talked with VinFast Global CEO Thuy Le about that in a one-on-one interview

Matt: :57 A lot of people won’t get the opportunity to come to Vietnam to test drive a car here in the mountains, how do you get them to trust a young Vietnamese car maker is going to be successful in the US and North Carolina?

Thuy: 1:45 I think seeing is believing. We wouldn’t bring the car to the consumer. Our market is direct to consumer. We bring the car to consumer. We let people test drive. And similar to Vietnam or elsewhere, people will be convinced. 

Thuy tells WRAL work will begin in the next week to prepare the nearly 2-thousand-acre site in Chatham County for construction of VinFast’s $4 billion factory.

“The message we’d like to give to people in North Carolina, Chatham County and the US in general, we are serious about what we’re doing and we’d like everyone to give it a try and keep an open mind,” said Thuy.

Andrew Lambrecht shared his first impressions of getting behind the wheel of the VF8. He’s a contributor to Forbes Wheels and a North Carolina native.

“I’ve driven a lot of EVs before. It felt very similar to the Volkswagen ID4 and a lot of its competitors,” said Lambrecht.

Lambrecht said with some small software tweaks VinFast can compete to put more electric horsepower on the highway.

“I have high hopes for VinFast, and I hope that with some changes this car will do very well in the US market,” said Lambrecht.