VinFast has just announced that it will join Israel in its journey to conquer the international market. However, in Israel, VinFast will not do direct business but cooperate with B-EV Motors as the official product distribution representative.
Specifically, B-EV will accept pre-orders for VF 8 and VF 9 models in Israel in the fourth quarter of 2022. It is not clear whether VinFast electric cars sold in Israel have the same battery rental policy as in the US or some other European market or not. The price of the car has not been disclosed yet.
Why Israel and not another market?
According to VinFast, the reason it chose this market is that Israel has a strong motivation in electrifying vehicles with the goal of 100% of cars sold on the market being electric cars by 2030. This country also has great advantage of complete transport infrastructure system, low electricity price, advanced technical and technological foundation.
Another interesting point that VinFast did not mention when entering the Israeli market is that this company has continuously “poured capital” into startups here for about 2 years. In November 2021, VinFast announced to become an investor of Autobrains – a company developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology for self-driving cars.
Not long after that in January 2021, the Vietnamese car company continued to “pour” capital into StoreDot, one of the companies that made a big splash when developing a “super battery” technology that allows a full charge in a few minutes.
In the future, when these promising startups develop, the appearance of VinFast in Israel can bring many advantages to both sides.
Is Israel a potential market?
As VinFast announced, Israel has great potential in the universalization of electric vehicles. This country is small, has a large population density – making it possible to build centralized charging infrastructure, not too spread. Israel has an abundance of natural gas, which helps reduce electricity prices and, more importantly, is considered a “high-tech” country – extremely open to new technologies.
However, it is a fact that the popularity of electric vehicles here is not high. As of 2019, only 12 electric vehicle models were sold in Israel, compared with 42 in Europe. Currently, this number has reached 24 samples, but it is still not too large.
In the first quarter of 2021, only 920 electric vehicles were sold here, accounting for less than 1% of total sales. This means that car sales in Israel reached approximately 100,000 vehicles per quarter, equivalent to more than 33,000 vehicles per month, a figure quite similar to the Vietnamese market.
A market with 100,000 vehicles/quarter while electric vehicle popularity is only 1% is clearly not a small market. In the context that the “big guys” of electric cars are only modestly present here, the opportunity for VinFast is not small.
Dror Michman, Chairman of B-EV Company also believes that VinFast will become the leading electric vehicle company in the Israeli market in a few years.
@ Cafef
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Source: Vietnam Insider