Open Source: I test drove a VinFast. My biggest takeaway was the price.

I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

Last Friday, I visited one of the country’s few VinFast franchise dealerships to finally get behind the wheel of the much-discussed electric vehicle headed to North Carolina. Sometime next year, VinFast promises to open a multibillion-dollar factory 30 miles southwest of Raleigh in what would be the state’s first major auto assembly plant. VinFast, a Vietnamese startup, has rarely been boring: from its dreadful initial reviews, to awkward gifts to journalists, high staff turnover, lobbying efforts, and a SPAC IPO that reminded people of recent meme stocks.

My trip to the Leith VinFast dealership in Cary revealed another unique thing about the company — and it has nothing to do with its cars’ mechanics.

Leith had two VinFast models in stock, a five-seat VF8 Eco and a VF8 Plus, each in identical 2023 and 2024 versions (literally, the only difference between the 2023 and 2024 is the car’s vehicle identification number). I test drove a blue 2023 Eco, taking the SUV on a 10-minute loop with a salesperson in the passenger seat.

If you came here for an in-depth review of the VF8, this will disappoint. I don’t know enough about cars to give informed opinions. The vehicle didn’t blow up. It felt like a smooth enough ride on side streets and the highway. At a market value price of $48,000, it is objectively nicer than my preowned 2017 Hyundai sedan. It had heated seats and adaptive cruise control. My bar to be impressed is low.

Has VinFast corrected its under-damped suspension or other problems auto journalists uncovered last year? The company says it has. Again, I’m not knowledgeable enough to say. I found the car’s regenerative breaking to take some getting used to, but that’s something I had never experienced.

So what’s the big takeaway about the VF8? It’s the lease. In January, the auto research platform Cars Direct found VinFast offered the cheapest lease deal of any car company in the United States. In addition to subtracting $7,500 from the sticker price to account for the federal EV rebate, VinFast subsidizes its vehicles for franchise dealers like Leith by lopping off an additional $15,000-plus in discounts.

After spending a couple thousand in upfront costs, people can lease a new VF8 at the Cary dealership for less than $300 a month, for 36 months, at no money down.

“It seems like a crazy lease deal to me,” texted Ezra Dyer, a senior editor for Car and Driver who lives in Southern Pines. “When you compare the list price to the lease payment — there might be other cars you can lease for $250/month, but not ones that retail for $45-$50k.”

Even Leith VinFast staff spoke of the lease deal with amazement, in tones that felt genuine and not like sales ploys. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” one said.

Auto industry experts emphasized VinFast needed to get hypercompetitive on pricing to overcome its early stumbles and lack of brand awareness. This lease deal seemed to be a move in that direction. I say “seemed” in the past tense because it might not be around much longer. A VinFast spokesperson told me the company is “out” of the 2023 models to lease, and the carmaker now advertises its 2024 model for $429 a month.

But sub-$300-a-month leases were still available last week at Leith VinFast.

I was curious if such a discount was sustainable for a carmaker that continues to lose hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter. Yet in terms of getting more Triangle drivers in VinFasts quickly, the low lease seems to be working. Leith VinFast opened in late December with 60 VF8s. The staff said they’ve since had to order multiple new batches to meet demand. And there were multiple shoppers at the dealership Friday.

Business & tech headlines

Onto the rest of this week’s news:

• Durham’s M&F Bank, the second oldest Black-owned bank in the nation, needed a technology renovation to keep up with larger competitors. It turned to Wilmington’s banking software provider nCino.

• Just over 400 pharma manufacturing jobs are slated to come to Wilson County, as the German firm SCHOTT plans to beef up its domestic supply chain with a syringe factory.

• Greenville, North Carolina’s Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) will bring a major reality show competition to Amazon Prime Video. While the filming location isn’t public, Donaldson this week said the ongoing expansion of his North Greenville studios would give his team plenty of space to shoot a potential Season 2.

For more on the world’s most popular YouTuber, check out my MrBeast feature from last week. And here’s more on his property holdings around Greenville.

• North Carolina FC, the Cary based men’s minor league soccer team, for the first time has outside investors.

• Connecticut lawmakers made a bid for North Carolina employers and employees this week by highlighting past problematic statements from GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.

• The tax compliance software provide Avalara intends to hire 100 more people at its downtown Durham offices (which offer a great view of Durham Bulls Athletic Park) by the end of this year. The Seattle company has already quadrupled its headcount in the Triangle over the past decade, and in an interview this week, Avalara’s chief revenue office explained demand for its platforms have swelled as tax policies have gotten more complex — especially in the e-commerce age.

National Tech Happenings

• Facebook poking is back and apparently cool among the youths.

• Apple is talking to Google about using the latter’s AI tech in the former’s iPhones, Bloomberg reports. And in other Apple news, the U.S. (and 16 states) are suing the company over allegedly maintaining an illegal monopoly on smartphones.

• We started with cars, so let’s end with them. Unbeknownst to some drivers, their cars are reporting their driving behaviors to insurance companies, The New York Times reported, which may affect insurance premiums.

Thanks for reading!