Tesla (TSLA.US) establishes subsidiary in Vietnam to enter Southeast Asia's fastest-growing electric vehicle market

The Zhitong Finance App learned that a newly released corporate registration document shows that US electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla (TSLA.US) has set up a subsidiary in Vietnam, marking its official entry into one of the fastest-growing electric vehicle markets in Southeast Asia.

According to the documents, the new entity called Tesla Motors Vietnam Co., Ltd. was registered in Ho Chi Minh City with a registered capital of 77.667 billion VND (about 3 million US dollars). The new company was founded on September 11 and was approved to engage in the wholesale and retail business of automobiles, vehicle parts, machinery and equipment, as well as related import, export and distribution activities. According to registration documents, the company has three legal representatives: American David Jon Feinstein as chairman, American Isabel Ching Fan as general manager, and Vietnamese Nguyen Manh Hung as deputy general manager.

According to reports, the electrification process of automobile markets in many Southeast Asian countries is accelerating. Among them, according to the automobile market report previously released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, sales in the Vietnamese automobile market increased 20.3% year-on-year in 2025, ranking first among the six ASEAN countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Singapore).

According to the report, the core driving force behind Vietnam's automobile sales growth comes from its local electric vehicle manufacturer VinFast (VFS.US). In 2025, VinFast contributed an increase of about 88,000 vehicles to the Vietnamese automobile market, entering the top five brands in the sales list of the six ASEAN countries. Unlike Thailand and Indonesia, which rely on traditional Japanese models of internal combustion locomotives, Vietnam's growth is driven by local electric vehicle companies, charging infrastructure, and related ecosystems.

PricewaterhouseCoopers believes that although Vietnam has not replaced Thailand and Indonesia in the ASEAN automotive supply chain (the two countries are still far larger than Vietnam's automobile production and export scale), it has become an important “new variable” in the ASEAN automobile market, especially in the transition phase of electric vehicles.