• A nearly new VinFast VF 8 left a reviewer stranded when it bricked itself.
• VinFast’s out-of-state service options appear to be extremely limited.
• While they considered towing the car 500 miles to the nearest service center, the issue eventually resolved itself.

VinFast has been offering some great lease deals on its VF 8 electric SUV, which may have some buyers tempted. But if you live more than a hundred miles from a VinFast store, our friends at Out Of Spec have a cautionary tale in their newest video.

Their VinFast VF 8—which they got using one of those crazy lease deals—left Jordan stranded, 500 miles from the nearest service center. The car was experiencing weird battery drain and warning lights, with Jordan suggesting it couldn’t fully turn off. He plugged it into a Level 2 charger to replenish the drained battery. When he pulled it off the charger, the VF 8 wouldn’t go into gear. The A/C wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t turn all the way off. The car was stuck. 

Luckily, it still allowed Jordan to shift it into neutral, so he was able to roll it out of the charging spot. But that still left him without a ride home. A friend took care of him, and he drove back the next day to attack the issue. He started by unplugging the 12-volt battery, hoping that would trigger a hard restart of the car. But it didn’t seem to do anything. Whatever the car was doing, it could sustain it on the high voltage battery alone. 

He reached out to VinFast for help, and found he was mostly out of luck. The person he spoke to couldn’t help, and VinFast didn’t have a “Doctor”—its term for technician—available to speak to him that day. The car has roadside assistance included, but with the nearest service center 500 miles away, they wouldn’t pay for that sort of distance. No 3rd-party mechanics can work on the car or diagnose it, either. The only options were either to tow it to VinFast themselves or have VinFast fly out a technician, but Out Of Spec wasn’t sure if that was an offer available to regular customers, or damage control from corporate because Out Of Spec is an EV review channel with a large audience.

Jordan was finally able to talk to a technician on day 3—the day after his first contact with VinFast corporate—who suggested yanking a main fuse to force the car to reset, as disconnecting the 12-volt battery doesn’t actually do that. While waiting Jordan had plugged the car back into the charger. When he went to unplug it and test the technician’s suggestion, he found that the car had fixed itself. The litany of error codes was gone from the dash.

Its cooling system still displayed a fault and the A/C wouldn’t go on, but after a power cycle that error cleared, too. The VinFast was drivable. The technician said it’d still need to visit a service center to “recalibrate” the 12-volt battery, whatever that means, which is a tall ask when it requires a 500-mile trip. Especially for a random fault in an almost-new vehicle.

It’s a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to own a VinFast. I assume most buyers live within a reasonable distance of a VinFast service center—I don’t think normal Americans are driving 500 miles to buy a VinFast—but if they ever road trip it to a state where VinFast doesn’t do business, it sounds like VinFast doesn’t have many options for them. It’s also a reminder that, as we move into the EV and software-defined vehicles era, we need independent shops to have access to tools that can repair these vehicles. In VinFast’s case, not only can you not service the car independently, but you also have to go to a service center for software updates. Over-the-air updates, though promised, still aren’t available.

That’s a tough proposition for a car with a bad history of software bugs and technical problems. Even if you can score a cheap lease deal, it may not be worth it.