Vietnam's VinFast Says Three Sales Executives Have Left EV Company

Three senior sales and customer-service executives have left VinFast this week, the Vietnamese electric-vehicle start-up said in a statement to Reuters.

The company said Gareth Dunsmore, deputy chief executive for global sales and marketing, had left "due to personal reasons and we respect his decision."

VinFast said it had eliminated jobs for two other U.S.-based executives: Greg Tebbutt, who had been chief marketing officer, and Craig Westbrook, former chief service officer, "due to changes in the management model and specific requirements of the business."

The departures are the latest in a string of senior executive changes for the Vietnamese automaker. They also come after a delayed and costly rollout of VinFast's first electric vehicles in California, its debut overseas market.

Dunsmore, Tebbutt and Westbrook could not be immediately reached for comment.

The company, a subsidiary of Vingroup JSC, shipped its first 999 VF8 models to California from Vietnam in November but needed until earlier this month to prepare them for delivery to customers after disclosing the shipped version of the EV would have lower battery range than it had flagged to customers.

VinFast has been selling the first batch of VF8s, rebranded as the City Edition to account for the lower range, on lease through U.S. Bancorp in California.

The cars qualify for a subsidy of up to $7,500 per vehicle payable to the finance company under the Biden administration's EV incentive program.