The Livestream Car Company: Inside VinFast's $530M Pivot

The company is Vinfast, the Vietnamese electric car maker, listed on the NASDAQ, they've just

lost a $530 million restructuring, they've gone what they call asset light, selling

off their Vietnamese manufacturing, restructuring their finances and repositioning the whole

business.

And the most interesting bit isn't the financials, I'm going to go over and show you some stuff

about Vinfast now, so let's go down there, and I'm going to share this screen instead, so

here we go, I'm just going to show you some graphics there, so we're talking about what

they've done. It's how they sell cars, they sell them on live stream, 501 cars in three days,

27,000 pre-orders in 66 hours, the same way TikTok sells you a curling iron.

The company is Vinfast, the Vietnamese electric car maker, listed on the NASDAQ,

they've just announced a $530 million restructuring, they've gone what they call

asset light, selling off their Vietnamese manufacturing, restructuring their finances,

repositioning the whole business, and the most interesting bit isn't the financials,

it's how they sell cars, they sell them on live stream, 501 cars in three days, 27,000

pre-orders in 66 hours, the same way TikTok sells you a curling iron.

So today we're going to go deep on Vinfast and what happened, what they actually do

that's different. And the much bigger story underneath it, that live social shopping is

now a billion dollar industry that's starting to land in Europe, cars included. After that we'll

do used EV prices in the UK that went up for the first time this year, which is a pretty

significant turning point. Our club rates are showing increases, I'll flash them up again in

a minute for you to see them, but they're all going up at the moment. It's a pretty significant

turning point and public charging on the rapid network just got more expensive again, 79p per

kilowatt hour weighted average on the ZAP map index. So four stores, 30 minutes, and as always

primetime.com slash club free to join, you get the best charging rates and the best lease deals

in your inbox every month. So let's get into it. Okay, so Vinfast, let's start with what you

actually need to know about them because most British EV drivers genuinely couldn't pick a

Vinfast out of a lineup. What is Vinfast and what's happening to the company in May 2026?

Vinfast is a Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer listed on the NASDAQ since 2023,

owned by Vin Group, Vietnam's biggest conglomerate. On the 12th of May, 2026, Vinfast filed the USSEC

announcing a $530 million restructuring of its Vietnamese operations, transferring its

manufacturing arm to a separate entity and pivoting to what it calls an asset-like model.

Keeping the brand, the technology, and the sales operation, but offloading the factories.

So that's the company. The story today is the restructuring, and it's worth understanding

because it's one of the biggest reorganizations of a publicly listed EV brand we've seen

since the Polestar, since Polestar reset its finances in 2024. Here's what the SEC filing

actually says in plain English. Vinfast is splitting itself in two. The factory side,

called VFTP, Vinfast Trading and Production, is being sold to a separate biogroup led by an entity

called Future Investment Research and Development. That deal is around $530 million. The remaining

Vinfast, the brand, the design, the technology, the global sales operation, will become the company

you see listed on the NASDAQ. The point of it is straightforward. Vinfast has been burning cash.

They had targeted breaking even by the end of 2026. That's now been pushed to 2027. Vingroup,

the parent company, is on the hook over over $2.5 billion in loan guarantees.

Something had to change. So they're separating the capital heavy bit, making the cars from the

hand heavy bit, just being marketing and selling them. If you're a Vinfast customer in Vietnam,

and there are 100,000 of you who bought a car in the first nine months of 2025 alone,

nothing visible changes. Same factories, same warranties, same service. The filings make that

very clear. If you're a Vinfast investor on the NASDAQ, the bet is asset-like business turns

profitable faster than an asset-heavy one. We'll see. Now the European bit, because this is where

it gets interesting for us. Vinfast announced UK plans back in 2022. They hired a former Genesis UK

boss, Andrew Pilkington, to set it up. They were going to launch the VF6 and the VF8, a compact SUV

and a mid-sized SUV, using a direct consumer model similar to Tesla. Their own showrooms,

their own sales team. By autumn 2024, the UK launch was postponed. In May 2025, it was

cancelled entirely. Vinfast UK was closed. Andrew Pilkington's role ended. The right-hand drive cars

that were going to be built in Vietnam ended up going to Indonesia instead. Across continental

Europe, the numbers are sobering. According to AAA Delta, Vinfast registered 84 cars across

the whole of Europe in the first half of 2025. Six of those were in France. The brand sold 97,399

cars globally in 2024. Most of those were at home in Vietnam. We've got a company that's a dominant

force in its home market, first car brand in Vietnamese history to sell over 100,000 cars in

three quarters, 11 straight months as the country's number one car maker. There's also a company that

didn't manage to get traction in Europe with the direct sales model. What's worth noticing here

is the strategic pivot. Through 2025, Vinfast started signing dealer partnerships in Germany,

France and Netherlands. Schachtheider Automobil in Germany, Autohaus Hoops, Astrada Simba in France,

they moved away from direct to consumer franchise dealers. The same model BYD is using,

the same model MG uses. It's a real change of approach. The picture is this. Vinfast in Europe

is much smaller than they planned. They're going through dealers rather than their own showrooms

and the global business is restructuring to take pressure off the balance sheet.

But to understand why any of this is interesting beyond Vinfast itself, you have to understand

the bit they really did differently. Back home where they actually became dominant and that's

the marketing model, specifically how they actually sold cars, which is the bit I'm really

interested in. It's fascinating and that's what we're going to look at next. Vinfast in 2026

is a brand in the middle of a strategic pivot. The Vietnamese business is one of the most successful

EV launches in any single national market in the world. The European business scaled back

significantly and is now rebuilding through partnerships. Whether the asset like restructuring

works is a story for 2027. But what they've done in Vietnam with their marketing is something every

car brand on the planet should be studying. And that's what we're going to talk about after this

graphic. This is like selling cars on live stream, the Vietnam playbook. I'm amazed by this story

because I work in marketing and do a lot of this. So how they managed to get this moving in

actual live streaming in the way that you do live social shopping, which is a huge deal at the moment

in commerce and retail and marketing. Vinfast managed to crack it. So I think it's a good model

to just dissect a little bit for how car companies go about selling cars. Vinfast Part 2 live social

shopping, live stream car sales, TikTok shop Europe, Vinfast VF3. It's the stuff we're going to look

at. I'm going to dig into this because it's not really a Vinfast story. It's a much bigger story

and Vinfast happens to be the most interesting case study in it. How does Vinfast actually sell

cars and is live social shopping really coming to Europe? Here's the direct answer. In May 2024,

Vinfast launched the VF3, their mini SUV using nine live shopping sessions on Vietnamese e-commerce

platforms, Shopee and Vin ID hosted by 15 influencers. In three days, they took 501 pre-orders

generating 7.5 billion Vietnamese dong. By the end of 66 hours, they had 27,649 deposits and that's

for cars. Over half of all VF3 orders came in online. The first car in Vietnamese history to do

that. The same live stream model is now growing faster across Southeast Asia and it's starting

to appear in Europe. Let me walk you through how it actually works because if you haven't seen a

live shopping stream, the concept sounds slightly ridiculous and then you watch one and you go,

live shopping or live commerce or social commerce is exactly what it sounds like. A person on camera,

live, streaming on TikTok or Shopee or Lazada, holding the product up, demonstrating it,

answering questions in the chat and taking orders in real time. The product page is right there on

the screen. You click, you pay, the order goes through and it's massive. In Asia, in Vietnam,

TikTok shop is now the second biggest e-commerce platform in the country. All of Southeast Asia,

TikTok shop generated $38.2 billion in gross merchandise value last year. That's not small

numbers. That's industrial scale retail. What VinFast did with the VF3 was take that model,

which had been used for clothes, makeup, electronics, all the usual stuff and applied to cars,

which nobody had really done before at scale. Here's the structure. They pre-announced,

they picked 15 influencers, they scheduled nine live stream sessions across three days,

they put the VF3 in front of the camera, the hosts walked through the spec, opened the doors,

sat in it, drove it and during the stream, this is the bit that's clever, you could place a non-refundable

deposit, just put a deposit down live while watching. They took 501 orders during those

nine sessions alone. By the end of the three days, they had 27,649 pre-orders for a car that started

at around $9,000. They had to revise their production targets from 9,000 units to 20,000.

The thing I find genuinely interesting about this, and this is what European car brands are

quietly watching, is what live shopping does that conventional car retail doesn't. It compresses the

funnel. You go from having heard of the car to deposit paid in 15 minutes, which I think is

generally and genuinely incredible. There's no test drive, there's no dealer visit,

there's no haggle, it's an entertainment experience that ends in a purchase.

Now, is this happening in Europe yet? Honestly, slowly, but it's coming. TikTok shop launched

in 2023. It launched in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Ireland through 2025. Fashion and beauty

have led the way. Tech and home are following. The infrastructure is now in place across the EU.

I'm seeing a lot of it and we're witnessing it happen with a lot more people in the West

beginning to do more around it. It's really happening.

What we haven't seen at any meaningful scale is European OEMs running live shopping streams to

sell cars. There have been experiments. Stelantis have done live streams for the Peugeot E208.

Renault has run live Q&A sessions for the Renault 5, Renault 5, the Chinese premium EV brand uses

a model that's adjacent to live commerce on the European stores, but nobody has done what VinFast

did. Nobody has put a car on a live stream and taken deposits in the chat and the volume the

Vietnamese market has accepted. The reason and this is just a read on it is that European buyers

don't trust car brands enough to put money down without a test drive. The cultural muscle for

buying a 30,000 pound product on a live stream just isn't built yet and that kind of makes

sense. It's a car purchase. It's the second biggest purchase you'll ever make, but it is working in

some parts of the world. People usually want to sit in a car. Tesla started the model with

shopping in Westfield and so on, where you went into shopping centers and started seeing the vehicles

and that's happening more and more. So it was more like a product experience and you'd have

what felt like going to an Apple store with experts talking about the vehicles and so on,

rather than an old dealership where they didn't really understand EV traditionally and they were

on a fast track learning track and it was difficult for them. So people want to see the dealer. They

have to be adopted by BYD and everyone else really, really cleverly. That said, the generation

buying their first car right now, early 20s, late teens, bought their phones on Instagram

and their headphones on TikTok, their trainers on Shopee, those expectations are coming with them.

If you're a car brand, a better 2030 retail looks like, watching how fast Vinfast did this in

Hanoi in 2024 is not a waste of your time. Verdict, the most quietly important thing about

Vinfast isn't the cars or the restructuring or the European numbers. It's that they proved you

can sell vehicles on a live stream of scale and a market that was ready for it. Live social

shopping is going to land in Europe, probably not for premium cars first, probably for budget

electric runabouts, something like a Dacia Spring or a BYD Dolphin or a Surf or a Future City and

when it lands, the brands that's already done it 10,000 times in Vietnam will have a head start

nobody else has. I think it's worth keeping an eye on. Okay, let's go up to you to EV prices

because that's our next story for you and here we go. Right, story three and if you've been

watching this show through the back of last year, this is the story I've been waiting for,

used EV prices in the UK have just gone up for the first time this year. Used car electric prices

in the UK rose 1.1% in April 2026. The strongest performance of any fuel type according to new

data from Kazana. Used EV are now the fastest selling fuel type in the UK retail market,

selling 33% more in March and April than in the first two months of that year. The earlier

doctor phase used EVs is officially over. Let me unpack that because if you're hesitating on the

used EV, the math's just changed. For about two years, used EVs in the UK were the worst performing

segment of the retail market. Three year old Teslas were dropping faster than Bitcoin,

Audi e-trons, Mercedes UQCs, depreciation curves that look like a ski slope. Dears got their fingers

burnt, buyers held off because everyone was waiting for the next price drop. That's now ended.

Used EVs sold faster than petrol cars in April, faster than diesel, faster than hybrids. A third

more used EVs sold in March and April than in January and February. SMMT data for Q1 already

showed used EV transactions up 32% to nearly 87,000 cars. Market share of EVs has gone from

about 3.3% a year ago to 4.3% now. Here's the bit that should make any used EV buyer pay attention.

Prices were 1.1% in April. Hybrids were the next strongest at 0.9%. Petrol prices actually went

down 0.5%. So used EVs aren't just selling faster, they're holding value better than fuels everyone

said were unkillable. The Kazana data lead, a chap called Darren Martin, was on the record this

week saying in our paraphrase that the earlier phase of the used EV market is over. That's a very

significant sentence. It means we've moved from EVs or a pump to EVs are mainstream supply and

demand. Why is it happening now? These three things. One is petrol prices, diesel touching

two quid a litre because of what's going on in the Middle East, people doing the math of the pump

and switching and we get a lot of interest around that. Two, suppliers caught up. Three-year-old EVs

are now coming off lease in proper volumes. The Tesla Model Ys, the ID3s, the Kia Enaros,

the Polestar 2s, they're hitting the used car market with realistic prices and proven battery

health. Auto-trader data shows three to five-year-old EVs are now selling in just 25 days on a

four-core petrol equivalent, 35 days. It's a 10-day gap. And three, this one's a bit of downstream

work that we've been doing on the show this year, is about battery degradation and that

it has begun to crack. The UK's largest study showed average battery health of 95% across

8,000 EVs. We covered it last week. GeoTab covered it. The data is now in the public

conversation. And buyers are starting to believe that we're what we've been telling them for two

years. Actually telling them for a longer than that as well. Two years at most, at least rather.

So what you shouldn't do, what you should do if you're looking for a used EV right now.

First, don't try to turn the bottom. You've missed it. The market is called the floor.

Second, focus on three-year-old stock. That's where the value sits. The first owner depreciation

has happened. Your manufacturer warranty is still active on the battery in most cases.

And the price to range ratio is at its best. Third, definitely get a battery health check.

Most dealers will do one as a part of the inspection now. And if they don't, walk away. A car with an

88% health certificate is worth more than a car with no certificate at all. Fourth, don't pay for

the car you see. Volume is going up. Supply You can afford to wait a couple of weeks

to hit the right one. So if you're sat on a fence about a used EV, the floor just moved up.

You're not going to time the bottom of the market because we've passed it. I think a three-year-old

EV in May, 2026, is the best value buy in the used EV market in the UK. And the year from now,

I think we'll be saying that price is held up, not that they're crashed. Gazana has called it.

Auto Trader has called it. SMMT volume data backs it up. The market has decided. So now is the time

to jump in if you're going to do it. Okay. Public charge went up again. And we are showing that

public charging is on our prices for Primetime EV Club. We're showing that the prices are rising,

especially DC fast charging. Public charging in the UK, 2026, using the Zatmap price index,

rapid charging prices, and the octopus electroverse we're looking at too. Okay. So this is the last

story. And this one is going to annoy some of you because I'm going to be honest about it.

Public charging in the UK just got more expensive again. The Zatmap price index for April 2026 has

just dropped. And the rapid network has gone up another three pence per kilowatt hour in a single

month. The weighted average prices pay-as-you-pride gop, the weighted average pay-as-you-gop price

to charge an electric car on the UK rapid and ultra rapid public network in April 2026,

was 79 pence per kilowatt hour. Three pence per month. According to the Zatmap price index,

that works out to about 23 pence per mile. The cheapest network on the top 10,

62 pence per kilowatt hour. The most expensive was 92 pence. Home charging on an off-peak

tariff is still around 8.5 pence per kilowatt hour, roughly nine times cheaper. Let me show

you what that actually means in your pocket. And I'm actually going to be displaying the live

prices right now because we updated this morning before the show on where pricing is for AC,

rapid DC, and all the pricing on your home networks as well and where they are right now.

And we're sending those offers out to club members so that they can see the best prices

and we do that each month. If you're charging a home on octopus go or an intelligent octopus or

any of the dedicated EV tariffs, you're paying normally around seven to nine pence per kilowatt

hour, roughly two and a half people a mile. If you pay about eight quid for 200 miles last

month at home over nine, if you drive past a public rapid charger this week, they'll be

quoting 85 pence per kilowatt hour and that would cost about £48 for the same charge.

Say electricity six times the price, which is crazy. This is something that's got to happen

around this DC charging, the VAT on charging and everything else. So that's the gap, nine to one

on average, six to one, even on a decent home tariff. Now the public networks aren't doing this for

fun. The Zatmap data tells us why. Two major networks have pushed prices up substantially

in March and April, which dragged the weighted average up 3p. Instavolt has been sitting at

the top of the price range at around 85p per kilowatt hour. Tesla superchargers for members

was around 53p a kilowatt hour, although that's not the quietest price today,

but it's one of the better deals out there if you're a member. GridServe sits between 79 and 93p

depending on speed. Total energy is at 79p flat for their 150 to 400 kilowatt sites. So if you've

got to use public and most EV drivers do for about 20% of their charging, the difference between

picking the wrong charger and the right one is genuinely significant. 40 quid versus 25 quid for

the same charge. But here's the bit that goes deeper. We covered this with connected curb a few

weeks ago. The 7 million UK drivers with driveway are stuck paying the public rate for all of their

charging, not 10% or 20% all of it. And they're paying nine times what everyone else pays who's

got home charging because they live in a flat or on a terrace street or in a council block.

That is the EV charging fairness gap UK 2026. It's the biggest unsolved problem in the transition.

The grant has gone up 500 quid for a home charger from the 1st of April. The cross-pavement solution

grant is still there. The local EV infrastructure fund, the levy fund, is finally rolling out at

street level. But for the driver who can't install a charger at home this year, the math is brutal

and it's getting harder, not easier. We did a deep dive on UK charging grants because they changed on

the 1st of April in the last couple of weeks. You'll see that in some of our previous show

on Spotify, on Apple and on YouTube podcasts. So what do you do actually do about it? One,

if you've got the option, the Octopus Electroverse is genuinely one of the best

public charging networks in the country right now in terms of deals. They aggregate over 50

networks and give you a single tariff card worth looking at and they do a lot of plunge pricing

on there as well. Two, get on ZapMap. It's the root planner. Filter it by price. There's a real

spread now and the lazy answer of just use whichever charger comes up is costing people 15 quid a stop.

Three, look at destination charging. Think about where you're going and how you're going to use

the car. Supermarket car parks, hotels, retail parks. Many are still free or under 30 people per

kilowatt hour. If you can grocery shop and charge for two hours at the same time, you've changed your

maths completely. Just don't sit on one of those seven kilowatt point charges from years ago because

you won't get much in there and they're actually quite expensive now. They were free but they're

getting more expensive. We got a short going around YouTube that's had thousands and thousands

of comments about that and it's a good time to look at what you're actually getting. Sainsbury

seemed to have a good charging network. I'll put the prices back up in a minute so you can see them.

So public charging UK 2026 is consolidated into a high price market with very little daylight

between the top providers. The cheap public charging window is closing. The serious savings now are

at home and that's how it's been for a while. If you have a driveway, you're finding one of two

networks that genuinely undercut. Everyone else is paying 23 pence per mile to drive electric which

is still cheaper than 2 quid a liter at the pump but the gap is narrower than it should be. If you've

got a driveway, you're winning or you can park off street. If you haven't, we need to keep pushing

the policy people for something better. The transition only works if everyone can afford it.

So I'll put the public charging prices up. So let's just go into our Q&A now and

make sure we've got that. So what I'll do is I'll just go back to our regular prices so that you

can see them like that. Share that screen instead. Share this tab instead and I will go like that

and hope it'll work. Okay cool. Yeah you can see it. Brilliant. All right so

questions. Q&A. Right we've got a few questions here. How long do EV batteries actually last in

2026? Longer than most people think and the data is now overwhelming. The UK's largest battery health

study looking 8000 EVs showed average state of health at 95% across all ages. Even at eight to

nine years old the median was 85% well above the 70% legal minimum. Manufacturers must maintain.

The battery degradation fear is a 2021 fear in a 2026 market so get your car tested, get a battery

health certificate and just check it out. If you're buying a three-year-old EV in May 2026

you should expect 90% plus battery health. The data is now consistent across Geotab,

P3 and the UK study. Don't let anybody in Facebook tell you otherwise. Question two,

did Vinfast ever sell any cars in the UK? No. Vinfast announced UK plans, launch plans in 2022.

They hired a Genesis veteran in 2023 and they postponed in autumn 24 and cancelled entirely in

May 2025. Vinfast has been closed. UK has been closed down. No cars have been delivered to UK

customers. The brand pivoted to a dealer franchise model in Germany, France and the Netherlands.

If you're seeing Vinfast cars listed on any UK site this year, they're parallel imports,

not officially supported, probably worth avoiding. But I do hope they come back and I do hope they

start live social shopping because it's incredible watching what they've managed to achieve with

live social shopping before. Question three, is it worth getting a home charger now that the

grant is £500? Yes. If you own your own driveway and your own EV, get the charger. The grant went

up £500 per socket on the 1st of April 2026. A typical seven kilowatt home war box installed

costs £800 to £1,200. With the grant, you're looking at £300 to £700 out-pocket, recovered in

about nine to 14 months of charging savings. You'll recover it so quickly charging at home.

The one caveat, if you're a renter or you live in a flat, the cross-pavement solution grants are

now available, but availability varies by council, so you're going to need to check availability

with your councils before you commit. Question four, should I buy a used Tesla Model Y in summer

2026? Lots of questions around this because used Model Y Teslas have fantastic cars, but Tesla

hasn't been attracting all kinds of speculation and problems over the last couple of years.

So do you want a Tesla? Well, if you like Tesla, yes. If you want to use Model Y, summer 2026

is statistically the best window to buy one. Used EV prices rose 1.1% in April for the first time

this year, and Kazana data suggests the early adopter phase of the used EV market is over.

Three-year-old Model Ys are now selling in around 25 days versus 35 for petrol equivalents.

The Model Y is the most traded EV used EV in the UK right now. Plenty of supply,

prices are stabilizing. If you're going to do it the next two months, you're best window.

Will I ever be able to buy a car on TikTok in the UK? So will live social shopping come to you?

Probably, but slowly. TikTok shop launched in the UK in 2023 and across Europe in 2025,

but no major car brand has yet committed to selling cars by a live stream at scale in Britain.

The cultural muscles put down the deposit on a 30k vehicle without a test drive isn't built here yet,

for obvious reasons. Expect budget EVs and accessories first, full cars later, possibly by

2028. I constantly get pushed to sell merchandise on my TikTok channels for Primetime EV,

and I've just started experimenting with some bits and I see that the other

creators who are working in the EV space are also kind of experimenting with it.

There's charging cables, there's quite good quality stuff, there's charges coming through,

so let's see how it goes. They promise you a little bit of a commission,

but this is not live social shopping, this is just having TikTok shop associated with your creator

account. What's more likely in the meantime is Q&A live streams, live unveilings with

deposit links and influencer-led pre-launch campaigns. I think we'll see a lot more of that.

Okay, that's it. That's the show, been fast restructuring $530 million and pivoting their

European strategy, live social shopping quietly building in Europe behind the scenes,

used EV prices turning around for the first time this year, and public charging getting

more expensive again on the rapid network. If you've got value out of this, the best thing you

can do and the cheapest thing because it's free is jump on primetimeev.com slash club.

We send you the best charging rates every month, we send you the best lease deals,

we send you the show summary in your inbox, so you don't have to remember it. No spam,

no sponsorship, no pressure, just the deals. Club at primetimeev.com if you want to email us,

hello at primetimeev.com if you're a brand and you want to work with us. Next Friday 11am,

same place, I'm Danny, that's primetimeev live. Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend,

enjoy the sunshine.

The Livestream Car Company: Inside VinFast's $530M Pivot

About this episode

Vin ID

Peugeot E208

three to five-year-old EVs

four-core petrol equivalent

pay-as-you-pride gop

AC

home networks

Zatmap data

connected curb

2 quid a liter

P3

early adopter phase of the used EV market is over

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Primetime EV