After already postponing its promised plant in North Carolina once, Vietnamese electric car maker VinFast is reportedly considering an additional postponement of a planned $4 billion auto factory in Chatham County. On Wednesday, Reuters quoted an unnamed source familiar with the company’s efforts in North Carolina as saying the facility may not open until after 2025.
It’s been more than two years since state leaders announced that VinFast would build its first foreign factory about 30 miles southwest of Raleigh, near the unincorporated town of Moncure. The news was celebrated by officials, as North Carolina had tried for decades to attract a major auto assembly plant. At the time, VinFast said the factory would open in 2024. A year later, the company acknowledged that production would not start until sometime in 2025.
Now even this timeline seems overly ambitious. Although the automaker held an official groundbreaking ceremony at the Moncure site last July, no significant vertical construction has yet taken place. In April, The News & Observer reported that construction had been paused because VinFast had revised construction plans for the site, which Chatham County is currently reviewing.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
