There’s a new startup car company – VinFast – looking to revolutionize the world of personal transportation. These days, that?s not very surprising to read. What is surprising is how this new car company is Vietnamese, and will be producing a home-grown sedan and SUV.
These first two rides will be produced at a new, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in northern Vietnam.
Literary Perspective
In 1992, Neal Stephenson wrote this book called Snow Crash. It’s a pretty interesting book, and there’s a passage in it I was reminded of when this press release wafted across my digital transom:
?When it gets down to it ? talking trade balances here ? once we’ve brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they’re making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here ? once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel ? once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity ? y’know what" There’s only four things we do better than anyone else: . . . “ Or, to put it in more modern terms: “You think Detroit’s got problems now" Wait until they start banging out the 2028 Camaro in Ho Chi Minh City....