He said what he said…
(kidding)
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oh the joys of auto spell and fitting in of posts between meetings.
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That’s in Bloc83. 
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Not that I looked into it, but looks like Vinfast is setting up dealer locations. This one in Orlando. Sorry for the crappy pic.
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List of Wake County Economic Development active prospects. Not all will come to Wake County but this is an impressive list:
Wake County economic development pipeline prospects:
Life sciences:
Potential jobs: 7,887
Potential investment: $5.9 billion
Advanced manufacturing:
Potential jobs: 2,504
Potential Investment: $857 million
HQ, call center, shared services:
Potential jobs: 1,450
Potential investment: $1 million
Software/IT:
Potential jobs: 800
Investment: $400,000
Smart grid/Cleantech:
Jobs: 262
Investment: $96 million
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Still can’t see this company’s name without IMMEDIATELY thinking of VIN Diesel’s The FAST and the Furious. They should hire him as spokesman.
How many are actually coming to Raleigh Proper inside the city limits itself? Just my opinion but Raleigh comes up short with these job announcements inside the city limits itself.How do we get this business to actually come to Raleigh and especially Downtown Raleigh?
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People ask the same question in Charlotte. For any kind of manufacturing like pharma there is no room inside Raleigh city limits for it. It has to be office tenants and Raleigh has won some of them lately Jewelers Mutual, Japanese tobacco company etc. For downtown Raleigh it will need to be an office based tenant and due to work from home etc those are just few and far between. However the former Citrix building is a great opportunity and I read recently they have been showing it a lot. It sounds like the Wake County EDC has been touted their buildings available and space available but it just takes time.
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I will put this here. Site Selection Magazine a publication for corporate RE execs and relocation consultants names Raleigh #5 best city for headquarters (Dallas #1 Charlotte #2) but this is great as Raleigh has not been thought of that way nationally like the others on the list. Also NC has the #2 best business climate after Georgia. New headquarters like the Japanese tobacco company going to One North Hills or the new tech office for Jewelers Mutual Insurance going there as well help fill and create demand for office space.
https://siteselection.com/site-selectors-survey-why-site-selectors-love-the-south/
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Plaid has picked the Triangle to be its newest East Coast hub in a move that will create 100 jobs. It’ll start in Durham’s WeWork and then expand somewhere else. The CEO, Zach Perret, is a Duke grad.
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Might have been posted previously but there’s been a Vinfast dealership at Autopark in Cary next to the Land Rover showroom for a while.
I’ve been a gearhead for as long as I can remember, but I don’t foresee Vinfast surviving. At least not in the US. In order to successfully break into today’s automotive industry (which collectively is valued at several trillion dollars) you need some sort of industry-altering breakthrough. For EVs that has to either be an enormous advantage in battery range/charging, or cost, neither of which apply to Vinfast’s vehicles. As it stands now, there’s no reason to buy a Vinfast over a competing vehicle from a much more proven company, especially considering its initial product (the VF8) was virtually unanimously panned by the automotive press.
I am not a Tesla fan at all, but it was in the very unique position of essentially being the first automaker to produce EVs at a large scale. Its success saw a wave of startups try to capitalize on that market (most of which have already folded), and obviously prompted a response from most legacy automakers. Now that more and more of the established automakers are rolling out EVs of their own, I don’t anticipate there being much chance of survival for most of the remaining EV startups. Tesla was able to achieve per-unit profitability fairly early in its production efforts, and predictably as production ramped up, the company as a whole eventually became profitable. Even the most successful competing startups (Lucid and Rivian) have yet to achieve that - and Lucid is reportedly seeing six figure losses on each unit sold. Rivian is comparatively not in as bad of shape at reportedly a ~$35k loss per vehicle, but obviously that is not a sustainable business model over the longer term…although with VW’s recent partnership, this seems at least somewhat likely to improve.
And then there’s the name…Vinfast just sounds like a scammy Carfax knockoff instead of a legitimate automaker.
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Raleigh was named the best performing city in the US by the Milken Institute in its annual report. This is a legit list, not some buzzfeed listicle.
“Raleigh’s ascent to the first position is due to its excellent performance in a range of aspects. With a thriving high-tech sector, strong labor market, and robust access to economic opportunities, Raleigh performs in the top quarter of large metros on most (11 out of 13) of the metrics included in the Best-Performing Cities index,”
Writeup from TBJ:
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https://www.axios.com/2025/01/14/best-performing-us-cities
^ A story link from Axios for those who can’t read Bizjournal.
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Well if I can’t make it in Raleigh, there’s always Ogden, UT (#2)…
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I’m surprised it’s there as its own city and not just part of the Salt Lake City metro. It’s like if they had Durham on the list as well as us. Great outdoor stuff, bland food.
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They did have Durham. #16
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You didn’t like the Jello molds and Funeral Potatoes? 
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Salt Lake CSA is Salt Lake MSA + Ogden MSA + Provo MSA. Looks like Provo was #1 in 2021 and 2022.
I agree. Also the rate of growth of the EV market is slowing making it all the more difficult to capture a piece of the market.
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New article from TBJ on the future children’s hospital. Now mentions 100 acres. Will cost $2-3b and be 500-600 beds. They are looking all over the Triangle for the location and expect they will decide on a site by this summer.
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