VinFast Eyes US Transit Market With E-Buses Offered as a Service

VinFast is taking a different road into the United States: instead of chasing public transit agencies with a straight vehicle sale, the Vietnamese manufacturer will let them try its electric buses through a bundled service arrangement. The entry point is NexMove, the joint venture formed by Transportation Management Services and Zeem Solutions.

The structure puts the operational burden on NexMove rather than the operator. Every contract wraps the bus together with charging, maintenance and day-to-day operations, giving transit agencies a lower-risk way to evaluate the technology before committing. To back that promise, the partners are targeting an uptime commitment of 97%. Demonstration buses that have not yet been certified will be parked at Zeem’s charging depots so that interested operators can inspect and assess them first-hand. Homologated vehicles are expected to arrive from the first quarter of 2028, and the plan was unveiled on 6 October 2026 at the TRANSform & Expo in Chicago.

The product itself is not untested. Roughly 2,000 VinFast e-buses are already in daily service across Vietnam, where the company handles manufacturing, operations and upkeep itself. The specification list includes lithium iron phosphate batteries, fast charging capability, anti-corrosion treatment and driver assistance built on cameras and radar.

Persuading American public agencies is likely to be the tougher half of the challenge. VinFast has not announced a US production site, pricing or any orders, and federal rules will heavily influence how quickly agencies can move. Local manufacturing is widely seen as a prerequisite for tapping federal transit funding.

Paul Gioupis, Founder and Chief Executive of Zeem Solutions and Co-founder of NexMove, said his team toured VinFast’s manufacturing operations in late July and came away impressed by the number of buses already in daily service and by the scale and quality of production. He described the vehicle as a proven product with real operating history, adding that NexMove looks forward to working with VinFast toward US manufacturing that satisfies Federal Transit Administration requirements so public transit agencies can put the buses to work.