VinFast vows to restart work on Chatham factory as NC’s site buyback date nears
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- VinFast pledges to restart Chatham plant construction and target 2028 production.
- State can buy all or part of the 1,765-acre site under the buyback terms.
- Company reduced local hiring target to 1,400 from 7,500; reported 2025 losses.
Following years of inactivity, the Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast said it will resume building its Chatham County car plant, with a goal of launching local production in 2028.
VinFast told investors Monday it intends to restart construction this year on its site 30 miles southwest of Raleigh. The pledge arrives months before North Carolina can initiate a buyback of the 1,765-acre campus due to the company’s missed production deadline.
It was a rare update from VinFast about its U.S. plans, which state leaders have hoped would produce North Carolina’s long-sought first major auto factory.
On March 6, VinFast submitted a permit to Chatham County for a 774,400-square-foot building foundation, the first plans the company has filed to the county in more than two years. Michael Smith, president of the Chatham County Economic Development Corp., said VinFast informed local officials it now aims to hire 1,400 workers at the site, down from its initial hiring target of 7,500. VinFast declined to comment on this figure in a statement to The News & Observer.
“As with any large-scale, multi-phase industrial development, we are continuously reviewing the project’s scope and implementation timeline to align with current market conditions and our global manufacturing strategy,” a company spokesperson wrote Tuesday.
The company has yet to build vertically in Chatham County, four years after it committed to constructing a $4 billion battery and car factory near the unincorporated community of Moncure. In March 2022, VinFast received state and county incentives worth up to $1.25 billion combined, including $125 million to reimburse the company for site preparation expenses.
As of July 2024, the state had paid $51.7 million toward VinFast’s site, $28.4 million toward surrounding roadwork, and more than $15 million for the nearby city of Sanford to improve its water and sewer systems.
To protect these upfront investments, North Carolina entered a unique purchasing agreement with VinFast that allows the state to buy all or part of the land if the company hasn’t started local manufacturing by July 1, 2026 — a timeline VinFast won’t meet. North Carolina can also require the company repay its site preparation reimbursements.
“We continue to monitor the status and communicate with the company to understand the timeline and scope of the project,” North Carolina Department of Commerce spokesperson David Rhoades told The N&O in an email Tuesday.
“Taxpayer protections in the state’s agreement remain in place today, and there have been no changes to the incentive or site development agreements. Ultimately, we’ll proceed in a way that advances the full economic development potential of that industrial site.”
VinFast did not share any new North Carolina jobs target with investors this week. “We will provide further details in the coming months,” company chairwoman Le Thi Thu Thuy said during Monday’s earnings call. She then highlighted the “smart manufacturing processes” VinFast has implemented in other factories to scale manufacturing.
Bumpy U.S. road for VinFast
Founded in 2017, VinFast has struggled to gain a foothold in North America, with production delays and dismal first reviews for its inaugural VF8 model coming amid a tepid electric vehicle market. In 2024, VinFast postponed its North Carolina opening until 2028 as the company shifted resources toward factories in Asia. VinFast that year reported delivering around 3,800 vehicles in the U.S.
“I truly wish we could have realized the full scope of the ambitious plans we initially set out to accomplish,” VinFast’s former U.S. spokesperson wrote late last year in a LinkedIn post announcing he had left the company.
VinFast sold close to 200,000 vehicles in 2025, but 85% of those sales were made in its home nation of Vietnam, where the company’s billionaire CEO Pham Nhat Vuong is the country’s wealthiest person. On Monday, it reported that 18% of its deliveries over the final three months of 2025 were made outside of Vietnam, a record high.
The carmaker continues to stomach steep losses. It lost $2.85 billion in 2025 alone, including taking a $236 million impairment on its North Carolina site. An impairment is an accounting write down companies take when the market value of an asset (what it would sell for today) has fallen below its book value.
“It does not represent a change in our long-term strategic commitment to the U.S. market,” VinFast chief financial officer Nguyen Thi Lan Anh said Monday.
Whether VinFast is serious about its newest timeline is one question. Whether North Carolina will give it more opportunities is another.
Signed in November 2022, the state’s purchasing agreement splits the Chatham campus into three parcels: A, B, and C. Depending on VinFast’s performance by certain dates, the state may trigger its option “over the entire property or just certain parcels of the property,” Rhoades previously told The N&O. “This would allow the State to seek other projects that could also utilize the site if the project is successful, but not as large as originally projected by the company.”
Aside from requiring VinFast to have commenced operations by mid-2026, the state agreement also says VinFast must create at least 1,750 jobs by the end of this year, 3,875 jobs by the end of 2028, and 6,000 jobs before 2033.
This story was originally published March 17, 2026 at 5:47 PM.
