On February 6, Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer VinFast announced the recall of nearly 6,000 VF5 vehicles sold in the local market in Vietnam to replace the combination switch. VinFast said in a statement that the recalled vehicles were produced from March to December last year, saying that only one vehicle that had been sold was found to have a switch problem, but so far no accidents have occurred.
The company said that during testing, if the driver pulled the combination switch hard when turning on the ignition switch, the headlights of some VF5Plus vehicles would go out, and the cause of the problem was an error in the design of the control circuit board of the component supplier.
VinFast delivered nearly 35,000 vehicles in 2023, below its annual target of at least 40,000 vehicles due to slow adoption of electric vehicles in some regions, fierce competition and economic uncertainty. However, VinFast pointed out that in the last quarter of 2023, its deliveries increased by 35% compared with the third quarter of last year, reaching 13,513 vehicles.
VinFast does not provide sales figures for each market, but in the second and third quarters of last year, about 60% of the company's deliveries came from its subsidiary GreenSM (GSM). GSM is a taxi operator and lessor headquartered in Vietnam and mainly controlled by Pham Nhat Vuong, CEO of VinFast. Currently, VF5Plus vehicles are only sold in the Vietnamese market.
In May last year, VinFast announced the recall of some vehicles in the United States because a software error caused the vehicle's head-up display (HUD) to malfunction, but the company did not disclose how many vehicles would be recalled. According to a statement from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the error causes the monitor screen to go blank.