Not So (Vin)Fast: Vietnamese EV Maker Recalls First Batch of 999 Cars Sent to US
A month after beginning customer deliveries on its line of electric vehicles, Vietnamese automaker VinFast(Opens in a new window) has issued a voluntary recall on all 999 vehicles it shipped to the US last fall.
The issue causes the dash display, known as the multifunction head unit (MHU), to go blank temporarily "while driving or stationary," reads the recall(Opens in a new window) fling with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
"When this condition manifests, the driver can see neither the display’s telltale warning lights nor the control icons. After an ignition cycle, the MHU display screen returns to normal operation."
VinFast has delivered 264 of the 999 vehicles to customers, a little over half of which are in commercial fleets. The company is aware of 18 instances of the dash screen issue, which occurred on 14 vehicles. Most, though not all, of them happened while the vehicle was in park.
To prevent this, an over-the-air (OTA) update going out today will introduce "a new watchdog mechanism that detects this process malfunction and subsequently reinitializes this small piece of software," the recall says. "It is able to detect and recover this process error in under 200ms."
It's one of many hurdles VinFast has encountered since embarking on its mission to introduce its EVs to the US buyers. The company initially planned to begin customer deliveries in December 2022, as soon as the vehicles arrived at port. But in January, VinFast delayed deliveries.
The news coincided with poor reviews from journalists who first tested them. Buggy software and unstable suspension as the car bumped up and down the road contributed to a general sense that the vehicles were not up to the premium standards of
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