What VinFast electric scooter charging costs, and what you are paying for

One price: 50,000₫ for a full charge. Not per hour, not per kilowatt-hour, and not more because you arrived at 9pm with the battery flat. You hand over the scooter or the battery, we plug it in, and you collect it full.

We are going to be straight about what that 50,000₫ is, because the electricity is the cheap part. A VinFast Feliz S or Klara S carries a 3.5 kWh lithium iron phosphate pack. At Vietnam’s current household electricity tariff — 1,984₫ per kWh at the bottom band and 3,460₫ at the top, under the schedule in force since May 2025 — a full 3.5 kWh costs somewhere between about 7,000₫ and 12,000₫ of actual power.

The rest is the thing that is genuinely hard to find in Hoi An: a proper socket on a circuit that can take it, in a ventilated space, with somebody there for the six hours it takes. That is what the fee covers — the space, the supervision, and the wear on our own electrical setup. If you only wanted the electricity you could charge at home; the reason you are reading this is that you are not at home.

Why your hotel will not let you charge in the room

Almost every traveller who turns up here has already asked their hotel and been told no. It is not the hotel being difficult, and it is worth understanding why, because it also explains why this service exists at all.

Vietnam has spent the last two years tightening the rules on where lithium batteries may be charged indoors, after a run of fatal fires in apartment buildings. Two changes matter:

• Decree 106/2025/NĐ-CP, in force since 20 April 2026, names indoor concentrated EV charging areas in the penalty schedule for the first time. An indoor charging area with no fire-separation solution, or without the required detection and suppression system, now carries a fine of 40–50 million₫.
• Amendment 01:2026 to QCVN 04:2021/BXD (Circular 31/2026/TT-BXD), effective 15 December 2026, sets out what a compliant charging area in an apartment building has to have: automatic fire detection and suppression, CCTV monitored from a room staffed around the clock, CO and HF detection, its own smoke extraction, and a cap of 50 two-wheeler charging spots per zone in a basement (80 above ground), each zone at least two metres from the next.

Those rules are written for apartment buildings, not hotels — but the enforcement climate is the same one every property manager in the country is reading about, and a homestay owner with a wooden staircase is not going to gamble on it. When your receptionist says “sorry, no charging”, that is the background.

How long a full charge actually takes

VinFast electric scooter charging is ordinary AC charging, not the fast charging you may be used to from a car — so plan on 4 to 8 hours, and the spread is almost entirely down to how empty the battery is when it arrives. VinFast quotes roughly six hours from zero to full for the 3.5 kWh pack in the Feliz S and Klara S, and that matches what we see. A battery brought in at 40% is usually done in three or four.

Two things slow a charge down and neither is a fault. The last 10% always takes disproportionately long, because the charger tapers the current to protect the cells — that is the battery management system doing its job, not a slow socket. And a pack that has been sitting in 35°C sun all afternoon will charge slower until it cools; if you have just come off the coast road, the honest answer is that the first twenty minutes are spent letting it come down in temperature.

Nobody plans their day around a charging stop. They plan it around lunch, and the scooter charges while they eat — that is the version that actually works.

Which scooters and batteries we take

Most of what comes through is VinFast, since it is far and away the most common electric two-wheeler in Vietnam, but the service is not limited to one brand.

If your model is not on that list, it is still very likely fine — the limit is the charger and the connector, not the badge. Send us a photo of the charger’s label on +84 935 206 306 and we will tell you in a minute, free, before you ride across town. Curious how far a full pack really takes you here? We measured it on local roads in our guide to the VinFast electric scooter range in Hoi An.

How VinFast electric scooter charging works, step by step

1. Call or message firstTell us the model and roughly what percentage is left. We will tell you whether a spot is free and how long it will take.
2. Bring the scooter, or just the batteryTo 84 Phan Chau Trinh. Removable packs are easy to carry in a taxi or a Grab if the scooter cannot make the trip.
3. We check the pack before plugging inA quick look for swelling, heat, damaged casing or a frayed charger lead. If something looks wrong we will say so rather than charge it.
4. We charge it fully and message youYou pay 50,000₫ on collection. No deposit, and nothing to pay if you change your mind and take it away early.

Bring the whole scooter, or just the battery?

Either works, and which one is better depends entirely on where you are staying.

Bring the battery if the scooter is nearly flat and you are more than a few kilometres out — An Bang, Cua Dai, out past Tra Que. A VinFast pack is heavy but liftable, it fits in the footwell of a Grab car, and it means you are not nursing a dying scooter through town. It also means you keep the scooter with you, locked where it is, rather than leaving it in a strange street.

Bring the whole scooter if you are already in the centre, or if you want us to look at anything else while it is here. It is also the only option on models where the pack is not designed to come out easily — forcing one out is a good way to damage the connector, and we would rather you did not.

Getting the range you paid for

VinFast quotes close to 200 km for a full 3.5 kWh pack on the Feliz S and Klara S. Nobody gets that in the real world, and the gap is not the manufacturer lying — those figures come from a gentle constant-speed test, and Hoi An is stop-start with a headwind off the sea. What you can control is how much of the gap is your own doing.

• Speed costs more than distance. Air resistance climbs with the square of speed, so the stretch where you sit at 60 km/h on the coast road eats range far faster than an hour of pottering through the lanes at 25.
• Two people is a real penalty. A pillion and a full basket will visibly shorten a day’s range. Budget for it rather than being surprised at An Bang.
• Do not habitually run it to zero. Lithium iron phosphate is tolerant, but repeatedly emptying a pack and then fast-filling it is the routine that ages it fastest. Topping up from 30% is kinder than topping up from 3%.
• Heat is the quiet enemy. Parking in full sun at midday and then charging immediately is worse for the pack than either thing alone. Shade it, let it cool, then charge.
• Use the charger that came with it. A cheap replacement brick is the single most common cause of the problems we see, and it is what the fire rules in section 02 are really about.

If you want the numbers behind the charging side of this rather than the riding side, we wrote them up separately in how long it takes to fully charge an electric motorbike.

Planning a day out around one charge

The practical question is not “how far can it go” but “where can I go and still get home”. From the Old Town, on a pack that starts full, these are the trips people actually make on an electric scooter without worrying:

The pattern is simple enough: an electric scooter is excellent for Hoi An and the coast, and the wrong choice the moment you want a mountain pass or a long day of highway. There is no charging infrastructure between here and My Son, and running out 30 km from town with no petrol station able to help you is a genuinely bad afternoon.

Where to find us

• Address:84 Phan Chau Trinh, Hoi An — about five minutes’ walk from the Japanese Bridge
• Hotline / WhatsApp:+84 935 206 306 · Zalo: 0935 439 306
• Roadside help, 24/7: +84 766 766 087
• Email:info@hoianit.com

It is the same shopfront as the rental counter, so if you are already renting from us there is nothing to arrange — charging our own scooters is included and you will never be handed one that is not full.

Or rent one that arrives charged

Plenty of people find this page while deciding whether to buy or borrow a scooter at all. If you are here for a few days, renting is usually the simpler answer, because VinFast electric scooter charging stops being something you have to plan around at all — we hand the scooter over full and we deal with the rest.

More on the rental side, including day rates and what is included, is on our electric bike rental in Hoi An page.

Questions we get asked

Prices and details on this page were checked in September 2026. The 50,000₫ charge and the 4–8 hour window are ours; battery figures (3.5 kWh LFP, about six hours zero to full, close to 200 km claimed range) are VinFast’s published specifications for the Feliz S and Klara S. Household electricity rates quoted are the retail residential tariff in force since 10 May 2025 under Decision 1279/QĐ-BCT (1,984₫/kWh at the first band, 3,460₫/kWh at the sixth, before VAT). Fire-safety rules cited are Decree 106/2025/NĐ-CP (effective 20 April 2026) and Amendment 01:2026 to QCVN 04:2021/BXD, issued as Circular 31/2026/TT-BXD (effective 15 December 2026); both apply to buildings, not to individual riders, and are summarised here for context rather than as legal advice.