VinFast VF8 Creep Torque Insane Problem! I've Never Seen Anything Like This

And you didn't touch anything, right? Just the brake pedal once we turned around on the street. What's the power meter? It's doing a burnout. Hello and welcome to another Out of Spec Bits episode. This is genuinely a safety critical scary episode regarding our Vinfast VF8. Now we've had this car for two years. This is what we have affectionately named Spring Roll. This has been Francie's daily driver. And I just stole it from her to bring it here for some tests over the next few months. And I'm so glad that we did because man are we learning a lot about the Vinfast VF8. Especially in low mu or split mu surfaces. What does that mean? Well, snow and ice, very slippery, low mu, low coefficient of friction. And this car has a feature that simulates a combustion automatic torque converter automatic transmission. Which is when you come off the brake pedal in this car, it will apply creep torque. Just like if you drive a normal automatic car with the Prindle shifter. Throw it in drive, the torque converter is always putting pressure forwards. And it feels natural for a lot of people. There are some automatic transmissions of course that don't do this. Dual clutch or single clutch that are automatically operated. It gets complicated. That's a car enthusiast thing. Most people are used to drive and there's creep torque applied. So the Vinfast has a setting to apply creep torque whenever you're not on the brake pedal or an auto hold. And it has the single worst pedal tuning I've ever experienced. And it's not even pedal tuning because it's just creep torque tuning. What I'm going to show to you is an experience that Scott and Ben had. And it will blow your mind. So bear with me as we go through everything because this is crazy. Scott, you're behind the camera. I am. You and Ben took out the VFA because Ben saw a video, I think from Jason Kamisa. Yes. Where he pushed this up against a dumpster. Yes. And came off the brake pedal and it just applied so much torque to push the dumpster out of the way. Correct. Because the Vinfast wants to go four miles an hour no matter what. Yes. Ben had a theory that we couldn't find a hill too steep for this to climb up. Yes. Now that's interesting. I wouldn't inherently call that dangerous, but maybe a little bit. It's not well tuned. There should definitely be a limit on how much force the car can push. Yes. To try to get up to speed. I guess the example Ben used is, you know, let's say the car is rolling around for whatever reason. It doesn't go into park and you're like standing here if there's an incapacitated driver, right? And there's a wall. If the car can't move, it's just going to keep adding power, adding power, adding power. And you're going to get squished. Yes. Until it reaches that four mile an hour mark. Yeah. What happens when a car that has no bounds for torque output reaches an immovable object? We should find out. Well, in this case, I think it will crush that object. It's very possible. It could be slightly scary. We're not here to insinuate anything. VinFast, don't sue us. We're just sharing our experience. So when Ben was testing that with you, you found an even scarier problem. Beyond just the creep torque problem. What the vehicle will do is, you know, you're going up a hill and it's trying to get up to four miles an hour. So it goes slowly. It goes, oh, I'm not going fast enough. Let me add power, add power. And it starts climbing. Yep. And then eventually you were climbing to the point, because it was a slippery surface, where one tire started losing traction. Correct. And then it just said, oh, you're losing traction. I'm going to give it all the power. Yeah, it gave us all the beans. And being inside of that car was insane. It spun the tire to like a million. Yes. And the noise, I mean, it sounded like a V8. So the video clips that we're going to play with you, play with you, play for you right now, are essentially the VinFast with no throttle application whatsoever. No, Ben had his hands on his knees. Well, I could do that and hit the throttle at the same time. I know, but it was to show that we weren't using the throttle yet. Okay. So watch what happens in creep torque in the VinFast. You join us in the VF8. The VinFast VF8. Yeah, VinFast VF8. Not to be confused with the other VF8s. So I briefly drove one of these when they first entered the U.S. Just out of curiosity, I work for a dealership group that has a VinFast dealer, where this car was bought, in fact, or at least from. And I went and drove one. And I remember it didn't go over 60 because the battery was cold. Okay. Which we did go over 60 today. So that's improved. I also remember having the most overpowered creep mode I've ever experienced. I don't think there's any power limit. So if you want to pan to our lovely hill here. This is the hill. This is a steep, steep hill. I mean, it's like a 30% or 30 degree maybe. Yeah. I'm going to just let off the brake. I'm going to let creep mode go here and see what happens. But I recall it not having a limit on creep mode because it creeped over a curb when I first touched it. We're moving. Oh, oh, oh. Look at this. I don't know if the angle is showing. Oh, it's going. It's showing here. I'm not touching the throttle. You're not touching it at all? No, I'm touching nothing. This is creep mode. What? Oh. It's. Oh, we see. Is that its limit? So it'll go up nearly a 30 degree angle. Oh. Electric motor power reduction. Drive with caution. I'm going to keep it on creep and see what happens. I think it's going to try to do something. Let's see. Okay, so it's spinning the wheels. Oh, oh, oh. It did not like that. I'm going to let off. I'm going to let it do its thing. Now it's going to creep again. We'll see what happens. Okay, it's creeping up. That's an insane level of creep for a car to have. It's still going. Oh, it's sliding. But it's still creeping. It's still going. I think that's its limit right here. Or it's a rut that we went. No way. It just went two wheels in the air there. It was like. Oh, wait, it's still trying. Did you hear the wheels spin? This is the most aggressive creep function. It's practically offered cruise control. You're doing nothing right now. I'm not. No, I'm not touching anything. It is rocking us. It like the wheel speed. I saw six, seven, seven miles an hour. There's 12 miles an hour. Now the problem is this wheels in the air and that wheels in the air. So they're spinning and it's not enough speed to get ESP to. That's gas. Now it's using traction to shift the power it needs to. But that's got to be the most overpowered creep that exists. That's insane. And just again, nobody can really see. It's a steep hill. I mean, we're in the snow. So I'm going to do another little experiment here. Okay. Are we going to go backwards? Does it creep backwards? I think it will. No way. Sometimes reverse creep can be a little different in terms of programming cars. Okay. For parking purposes. So I'm off throttle. Well, I'm going to use throttle to get out. Or it could be reduced capability in reverse. God, that camera. I'm going to be motion sick. Yeah, I know. I'm not loving that. I'm off throttle. This is all creep. It's going to probably increase power. Yep. It has increased power. No way. Oh my God. No way. Did you see the power meter? Look at this. What's the power meter? It's doing a burnout. The rear tire is smoking. I don't know if you can see that. Oh, they can see that. It's smoking. It's smoking like crazy. They're on creep mode. You can smell the rubber. No way. This is by far. That's so aggressive. This is the Out of Spec Awards 2025. It's a late entry for 2025 and over in 2026. If you can find a car with a more aggressive creep mode. That's wild. Let us know. Because it. Actually, wait. Do you see it? Oh my God. It's black. Yeah, yeah. From smoking. Okay. Can your creep mode do that? No way. And people say the VF8's a bad car. Well. I bet you no other car will creep higher than this one on the air. Look at how deep it got itself in there. It had 60 mile an hour rear wheel spin. Arguably stronger. By the way, track control was on. Can we try one with off? Yeah. Or should we get Kyle? Yeah, let's go get Kyle. Because he needs to know. He's going to freak out. Yeah, I don't think he's ready for that. All right, my time to experience this. Yes. So we have creep on. Creep on. I'm going to leave track control on. Okay. And we had it on the whole time last time. Yes. In fact, if you see the road clips. Did you get any outside shots yet? Not yet. Okay, we'll do it. Okay. We might have to. I can do that. So I believe, to a dangerous level, this is the strongest creep in the entire automotive industry. And I'm going to include like a bulldozer or something. Okay, okay. I can't believe that. So I'm going to let off the brake. There's no way it's going to climb this and creep. Creep is on. Again, foot's off. Nothing. Yeah. Oh, it's adding. Just wait. It's going to keep adding. This car really wants to do 11 miles an hour, whatever creep speed is. Oh my God. So you're not touching anything? I'm not touching anything. We just got wheel spin. Now it starts to cradle itself and rock. Oh, we just had a wheel flare. Yes. Wheel flare. It'll just do this all day? Yes, it will do this all day. Oh my gosh. I'll take a little bit better angle. We'll see if it'll... Yeah, so it's... Let's turn off stability control just to see. Will it creep with stability off? Yes. Oh, it's holding us. No, sometimes it does that and then it keeps going. But it might be done here. I like how it just triggered blind spot warning. Let's see. What's traction mode? Well, that's what we're looking for. Yeah, turn it to traction mode. Traction mode. Is that like half off? I don't know if that's like DTC or more traction. Yeah, I assume that's like half off. We also feel sick looking at this. Yeah, because of the lag. Okay, we'll go back to drive. Now, what we found is reverse might be stronger. Reverse is insane. Okay. Here it goes again. Oh, it's funny how it just waits and then blends in after way too long. It's like slowly increasing the number. And I do think stability intervention does cut it. The wheel flare is hilarious. It has like the slowest response to the wheel flare. Are we going to show them? Reverse is insane. We're going to do traction control on because I believe it was on in this moment earlier. All right, yeah. We went on a different path than we did last time. Because it did leave marks. We did do a burnout. On grass? Yes. The reverse wheels, I think, were at about a 60 or 70 mile per hour wheel flare. They were smoking. I was touching nothing. Okay, I'm off everything. I'm going to crack the window just so we get a little sound. Touching nothing other than the steering wheel just to keep us going straight. Traction control on. You're not touching anything. No. He's not touching anything. Oh, my God. It's spinning. It's spinning to a million. That's max. It's got to be doing a hundred mile an hour wheel spin. I'm on the brake now. But this car wants to go up the hill. I got to get out and show everyone this. That is the craziest. That is the single worst drivetrain tuning I've ever experienced. Now, here's the one thing I do want to highlight where I think this could be a safety issue. Years ago, there was an actor who was killed because his Jeep rolled down a hill and crushed him against a fence. Okay. If you got out of this car, left in and drive, and walked in front of it between this car and a wall. It'll just keep progressively. It'll just keep adding power until... Pop? Until it starts spinning tires. I think we can push a dumpster with it. Oh, easy. All right. Watch my bumpers on this thing. I still got a lease returning, all right? So, Ben, just promise me one thing. You're not going to touch the accelerator pedal. Absolutely. I can get out. I'll film it from the inside. Okay. Yeah. No pedal cam foolery here. Something happened with the front bumper on this thing here. Not us. All right. Back around up there, Ben. Just let it creep up. No. Same line. It's fine. Okay. So, that's reverse creep. You can watch it add power. No way. That's insane. And he's not touching the accelerator pedal. Okay. You're going to kill my tires. Dude, you're straight up just burning the thing up. That's the worst. Does the motor not support traction control? That is... It just smells like... It's smoking. Look, it's literally smoking the tire on mud. Should we try Fords again? You have ESC on, right? On. Is that not incredible? Should we turn it off? No, I got to get a short form video of this. Viewers, this is our VinFast VF8, and it has the single worst low-speed drivetrain control. Ben is going to show you creep mode. A lot of EVs, when you take your foot off the brake, will put some force to move. This has a setting... Emulating a gas car. Yeah, emulating like a gas car. So, that setting is on. On. Right now. Ben, show everyone traction control is also on. Traction control is fully enabled. Ben's off the brake. He's not going to touch any more pedals from now. It's going to basically feel the resistance from the hill. So, that seems normal. And then, it's going to add power. So, it'll climb its way up there until it gets to a point where it can't move because it loses traction. And then, it just goes full freaking throttle on the rear axle. And it's hilarious. Look at this. That is like a hundred mile an hour wheel spin. With traction control on. Just smoking the tire. You know what stopped it? The front wheel started to spin. And stability control, you can hear the brakes go... And grab it. So, I'm going to go at a straighter angle so all four wheels stay on the ground and we don't have... Okay. But if you just let it sit there, it'll roast that tire all day. We did it for like a minute. Oh, it's spinning that side. And you didn't touch anything, right? Just the brake pedal once we turned around. Yeah, now go up and drive. Traction control off. I don't know if we even tested that earlier. Alright. So, now traction control is off. Now, just send it. Oh, it's doing this one. Oh my god. That was getting blasted. That's creep. That's no accelerator pedal. That is creep torque. Ben, that's amazing. Electric motor power reduced fault. All the lights. Brake system fault. So, that one wheel, because it's an open diff, was going like a million miles an hour. It was going so fast. I actually hit the brakes because I didn't want the tire to explode. That's what I thought when I was going behind it. So, Scott, that's pretty bad tuning. Bad? I think that's terrible tuning. So, I asked some friends who are in the car tuning business about this. And I was like, what do you think it could be? And many of them said that if you buy an off-the-shelf traction control or stability control system from like a Bosch or whatever. They didn't mention them. I'm just saying Bosch is a common provider of these systems. The base level tuning doesn't activate any traction control or stability control until there's throttle tip in. And because there's no throttle tip in creep mode, there's no wheel speed control. Yeah, well, there needs to be. I feel like that's one line of code. Well, it paints a picture as to how simple this could be to detect out in the wild. For example, I was just in a proving grounds in Baudette, Minnesota. It's called AET. Almost every manufacturer goes up and does winter testing. And at many of these winter test facilities, for example, the out-of-spec track is like a warm weather test facility. It doesn't look like it right now. This is one day after snow. If anyone needs to rent the out-of-spec track, by the way. Send us an email. We'll happily rent you track time. So a lot of tracks, and something I want to install on that hill over there is graded surfaces. So you can do a 20% grade, a 45% grade, a 100% grade. So that tests that side of things. But then you can add a split mu surface in there, which would be like a polished surface or an icy surface on one side. And then a rugged, grippy surface. Yeah. So then all VinFast would have to do in that scenario would be to put a wheel up. You know, just drive up there. Yeah. And then they would be like, oh my God, the car is completely undriveable, unstable, scary. And then like, boop, boop, boop, two lines of code. It's literally two lines of code. Well, yeah. Not really. But actually. But like they could just have fixed that. Yes. And so it just paints the picture that it feels like this car was designed and engineered in simulation, but never tested and adapted in the real world. And that very well could be the case. We don't know. But yeah. I will say I was at Magna once and saw a bunch of these rolling around there. Oh, okay. So they used like nice componentry and proper automotive companies to help them get up to speed really quickly. Yes. But many things were missed in the speed of development. This is why well-rounded, complete testing is necessary. Yes. And that's going to be a big focus. Also, why we moved here to benchmark and test vehicles after they're on sale. Yep. And so this is part of, you know, why I'm glad we're here. So that's a real problem that, you know, off-throttle wheel speed, a million. The VinFast will just do whatever it can. To get up to four miles. It was crazy when it was going forwards up the hill on that back right wheel with traction control off. Not that it made any difference. I was concerned. Ben and I looked at each other because we saw that you were suddenly behind us. And we said, we need to hit the brakes. Yeah, I thought. I mean, I was getting pelted by stuff, but I was like, imagine if it kicked up a rock. Yeah, it'd kill you. At like a 350 mile an hour wheel speed. I don't know what it probably was at. Probably 120. Very fast. But it was moving. Even weirder than this. Okay. I was in my Polestar 1 yesterday. Oh. Which is my personal car. Yes. On ice, backing it into the garage. Just inching it into the garage. And we have ice all in front of the garage door. And I had it in electric mode, which is rear drive only. And it was in key. It was actually, technically, it was in hybrid mode. Because I just turned it on through it in reverse. And I came off the brake pedal. And I'm backing up. And then I heard... And you said, what the heck is going on? And my back right tire was in reverse, spinning to a bajillion. Just like this did. That's so crazy that it happened 48 hours. I've never experienced this phenomenon before. But now we're going to have to test it with every car. Yeah. Because what my Polestar did was it spun to a million for probably one and a half to two seconds. Mm-hmm. Cold started the combustion engine. And then that is the way the front tires get traction. Because it's only combustion up front. Yeah. And then pushed me backwards. And then stability control kicked in. But I was like... Wes was like, what the heck was that? Because he was inside. But you knew it clicked in your brain immediately. I was like, oh my god. It has the same problem as VinFast where the stability control systems are not enabled. Or traction control is not enabled until there's throttle tip in. That's so crazy. Because if I'm in an electric mode and I floor it, it just does throttle torque limiting. Yeah. Just like this would do. I just thought that was crazy that my Polestar had that bearing that that's a Swedish brand. Yeah. That handles the snow and stuff. That was wild to me. Yeah. So this is a real problem against not just VinFast. This is not a smear campaign. I actually think this is kind of a cool car. It's just you don't like it, Scott? To be determined. I need a few more weeks with it. Yeah. We got to road trip it. Yeah. I just really think that this is a problem. And it seems to be a problem beyond VinFast. Now, my Polestar was less of a problem. Why? Because it definitely kicked on the combustion engine and then limited things down. Okay. So it realized. This just spun and never stopped. Yeah. This went for a whole minute, you and Ben were saying. So it's definitely not nearly as bad. But it definitely had a wheel flare on the Polestar. And then got itself in a check. Yeah. So this is a problem. We got to build a rig to test this. Yeah. Because it actually kind of scared me in the Polestar. I was like, oh, I don't want to slide into a pole. Or into the garage or something. Yeah. I don't even know how we would begin. But I think just the mixed surfaces would be a start. Yeah. We got to build some split new surfaces up on that hill. So if you guys have any ideas, let us know in the comments. Yeah. I think we can use tile with a drip system. Oh, smart. Yeah. Some ceramics or even polished stainless can work. Yeah. So we'll work on that. But damn, freaking wild. It's crazy how bad this car is. But even wilder to me was when the Polestar did it. And it did it a lot less worse. Do you think if we hadn't experienced the VinFast earlier in the day or two days before, would you have even known what was going on immediately with the Polestar? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't have. I would have panicked. You can just tell. But that's why I'm not allowed to drive the Polestar. Yeah, the panicking should never happen in the car, regardless of what it's doing. There's always ways to stop stuff. Well, thanks for watching. That was just a crazy drivetrain calibration experience. That was insane. What's wild is I had just come off of spending time with Lucid in Minnesota at a cold weather test facility. And they are obsessed with drivetrain calibration. Like literally 1,000 hertz almost, just getting the wheel speed to perfectly match everything they want it to do. And then you get in the VinFast and then... So thanks for watching another Out of Spec Bits episode. More of a PSA than anything. Hopefully VinFast sees this and updates the car. They have not reached out to us because we did post this on social media. It has over half a million views. Actually, it's got almost a million views across all platforms. Yes. So you would think they would see it. Maybe they'll see it. And send us an email, VinFast, if you do. Yeah. Thanks for watching. See you in another one again soon. Bye.