Vietnam's VinFast reports customer to police over 'untrue' YouTube complaint

Vietnam's indigenous carmaker VinFast has reported one of its customers to the police for making 'untrue' comments on YouTube about the quality of the company's car. The customer made complaints about the VinFast Lux A2.0 car that he owns.

VinFast issued a statement saying that the Vietnamese YouTuber with 455,000 followers called Tran Van Hoang uploaded "untrue content" that "affected the reputation of VinFast". "Although Mr. Tran Van Hoang proactively removed those clips, we saved all the evidence and have sent our complaints to the police," the statement added.

A copy of the now-deleted video which remained on the Internet Archive website, Hoang had said that he was proud to own a VinFast car and was only reluctantly highlighting problems, Reuters reported. However, VinFast maintained that it had "sufficient grounds to prove that it is not just a normal complaint". "This is the first time we have reported someone to the authorities in order to protect our reputation and our customers," the company was quoted as saying by Reuters.

VinFast is a part of Vietnam's largest conglomerate Vingroup and was founded by the country's richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong. Vietnam's number five car brand has ambitions to target the US electric vehicle market and plans to soon set up facilities for its EVs there. It also plans to challenge Tesla's electric cars in the US and Volkswagen's in Europe.

Further, the company is looking for a possible share sale that could value it at $60 billion and also plans to sell its electric cars in Canada and Europe. In context to its police complaints, the company also said, "If a similar incident were to occur when operating in the United States, we will also submit a request to the authorities in accordance with local law, and to protect our legal rights".