Chairman and founder Pham Nhat Vuong announced the goal at the annual general meeting in late June, according to local media reports.

To start, the group plans to sell 15,000 EVs in the US next year, and several hundred thousand units over the next five years.

Vuong, Vietnam’s richest man, said he was “completely confident” Vingroup will meet these goals, and will invest US$2 billion of his own fortune to fuel the sales push in the US

Vingroup invested roughly US$3.5 billion to bring an auto plant online in the northern Vietnamese city of Hai Phong in June 2019.

The facility currently has an annual output capacity of about 250,000 vehicles. The company sold roughly 30,000 vehicles in Vietnam in 2020, and plans to start selling EVs here by the end of this year and in Europe in 2022.

As part of its expansion, Vingroup is also considering listing carmaker unit VinFast in the US.

The debut was expected to happen as early as the April-June quarter in initial news reports, but preparations are believed to be taking longer than expected due to different accounting systems and other issues.

The group has been preparing for a stock market debut, said Vingroup vice-chair Le Thi Thu Thuy, but she did not provide a target date.