HANOI, Oct 25 - VinFast on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with PetroVietnam Oil Corp. , or PV Oil, to build charging stations for its electric cars and scooters, its parent said.

The company, a unit of Vietnam’s largest conglomerate Vingroup JSC, is building a $3.5-billion scooter and automobile complex in northern Vietnam, with its first production electric scooters slated to hit the streets late this year.

Thursday’s agreement will pave the way for VinFast to deploy charging stations at 20,000 of PV Oil’s existing service stations in Vietnam by 2020, VinGroup said in a statement.

This is part of VinFast’s plan to launch between 30,000 and 50,000 charging stations nationwide by 2020, it said.

VinFast customers will be able to charge their vehicles or change their batteries at these stations, it added.

VinFast Chief Executive Officer Jim Deluca told Reuters in an interview earlier this month that the firm would produce 250,000 electric scooters a year alongside 250,000 cars, in an ambitious production target that is set to eventually increase to 1 million units each a year.

The company has started on the development of a battery electric vehicle with Germany’s EDAG Engineering.

Vingroup, which has a market value of about $13.2 billion, also has businesses in property, hospitality, entertainment, retail, healthcare, education, agriculture and smartphone production. ($1 = 23,350 dong) 

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