Vietnam's public EV chargers must work across compatible brands from July 2027

Starting July 1, 2027, public charging stations in Vietnam must be able to serve vehicles from more than one manufacturer. Circular 61/2026/TT-BCT is the Ministry of Industry and Trade's regulation setting technical standards for EV charging poles and stations. Under it, operators must equip their chargers with compatible connectors, charging modes and technical specifications, allowing compatible vehicles from different brands to share the same facilities, The Investor reported on October 8.

The clause that matters most sits in software. Station control systems must not restrict charging for vehicle configurations that have been publicly declared compatible, provided technical, authentication and safety conditions remain unchanged. A connector that physically fits is only half of it. Once a configuration is declared compatible, the control system cannot be the thing that turns the car away.

The requirement is focused on technical compatibility. Because authentication is one of the stated conditions, operators appear to keep control of how drivers sign in, while the rule targets lockouts built into hardware and control software. For anyone buying, installing or running chargers, three questions follow: which sites the rule covers, what existing stations have to do, and how fast the fleet it serves is growing.

Outdoor and public sites, not the basement

The rules apply to stations at rest stops, in parking facilities and in public areas. They also apply to outdoor sites and to stations under standalone shelters. Chargers in basements, indoor garages and enclosed parking areas are exempt. The regulations also do not cover private charging stations, wireless charging equipment, chargers supplied with vehicles, or equipment used for testing and research. Viet Nam News reported the same scope and said the rules were issued under the circular alongside national technical regulation QCVN 32:2026/BCT.

Neither report says whether separate rules govern enclosed sites, so a developer with mostly underground parking should check that question directly with the ministry before assuming nothing applies.

The renovation clause for existing sites

Stations already running get time. According to Viet Nam News, equipment legally installed before July 1, 2027 can stay in service during a transition period. Once the regulation takes effect, owners and operators get six months to check that their sites meet the safety requirements and as long as 24 months to correct any shortfalls. A defect that creates a safety risk must be fixed immediately.

Any part of a station that is repaired, renovated or expanded after the rules take effect must meet the new technical requirements.

In practice, this links the compliance calendar to the capex calendar. Neither report defines how large a repair or expansion has to be before the requirement applies, which makes the specification question one for purchase orders being written now, even for sites that will not be touched until 2028.

Price on the screen before the session

The regulation also changes what a driver sees and what the operator keeps. Before and during each transaction, charging service operators must show customers the electricity consumed, the charging time, the price or pricing method, and the total amount payable. Operators also have to store and protect records of operations, incidents, metering, payments and customer feedback, and keep those records retrievable.

The reports do not say whether the disclosure has to appear on the charger screen, in an app or both, so operators running mixed fleets of hardware should expect to confirm how each model displays a running total.

A fleet changing faster than its chargers

Those figures cover the first seven months of 2026. Motorcycles Data, the source of the two-wheeler numbers, counted 513,742 electric motorcycles sold in that period. The 137,697 VinFast cars were delivered over the same seven-month window.

Compared with the vehicles already on the road, the shift is still early. Viet Nam News puts the country's stock at about 6.7 million cars, around 3% of them electric, and 70 million motorcycles, with electric models at about 4.3%. Electric bikes take 27.7% of new two-wheeler sales but make up only 4.3% of the motorcycle fleet. That gap suggests most of the change is still ahead as older bikes are replaced, and charging demand would keep building with it.

By 2030, Vietnam wants every bus and taxi, along with 50% of urban vehicles, running on electricity. The goal is part of its drive toward electric mobility under its pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and it points in the same direction as the sales figures.

Research on charging in Ho Chi Minh City, posted to arXiv, cites a forecast that Vietnam's EVs will reach 1 million in 2028 and 3.5 million by 2040, and names the lack of charging infrastructure as a brake on that growth. In a survey the authors cite, 70% of respondents said they were interested in buying an EV, yet many held back. The main reason, given by 18% of respondents, was the limited availability of accessible stations nationwide.

The ministry's rationale makes the same point. It said issuing technical standards is critical to supporting charging infrastructure and strengthening consumer confidence in the EV transition. A shared-use rule goes straight at that hesitation: a driver's usable network would include every compatible public station, rather than only the ones their own brand happens to run.

Why now, and the risk of going early

The strongest case against locking in a standard now is that the technology keeps moving. Le Thanh Hai, who directs the Centre for Applied Economic Consulting, part of the HCM City Institute for Development Studies, told Thanh Nien the timing suits a market where EVs have gained a real foothold, domestic manufacturing exists and investors want a clearer framework.

He also pointed to the tension. Global EV and charging technologies are still evolving, and so are their standards. Rules written too early can go stale as battery and charging technology change. Rules written too late make large investors hold back because they fear regulatory risk on capital already committed. A standard fixed in 2026 for hardware installed from 2027 accepts the first risk to reduce the second.

What dense demand looks like on a map

The Ho Chi Minh City study, by researchers at Foreign Trade University's Ho Chi Minh City campus and Japan's Nara Institute of Science and Technology, shows the scale a single city could need. Their mixed-integer nonlinear programming model, a method for picking optimal sites under cost constraints, looked at the problem from the operator's side and the driver's side together. It weighed seven kinds of cost: installation, land rental, maintenance, operation, charging, waiting and travel.

Starting from 1,509 points of interest and 199 residential areas, the model picked 134 points of interest hosting 923 charging stations, made up of 592 Level-2 and 331 Level-3 chargers, to fully meet modeled demand. Thu Duc City had the largest share of points of interest, 19.02%, and of population, 13.06%, which made it the strongest candidate for charging infrastructure.

Waiting and travel, the costs that land on drivers, are where shared use would matter most. A driver whose brand has no station nearby would travel further or wait longer, and a compatible public charger at the closest point of interest could reduce both. On the operator side, the same logic could widen the customer base each site serves, which siting models of this kind set against land rental and installation costs. The study came out before the circular, so its 923 stations describe a network sized without the rule, not one designed around it.

Who already shares a plug

Vietnam's charging market today mixes vehicle manufacturers, distribution networks and independent charging providers, and some networks already serve several compatible brands, according to Viet Nam News. VinFast currently has the largest charging network in Vietnam. For operators that serve several brands, hardware built for compatible vehicles from different makers could make that model easier to run.

The trigger to watch is the public declaration of compatible vehicle configurations, since that is what obliges a station's control system to accept a car. How many makers publish those declarations, and how quickly, will show whether brand-neutral plugs turn into brand-neutral charging in practice once July 1, 2027 arrives.