&w=3840&q=100)
Vietnam to ban fossil-fuel motorcycles in central Hanoi from July 2026
AP Hanoi
Vietnam will ban fossil-fuel motorcycles and mopeds in the heart of the capital, Hanoi, starting July 2026, as part of a nationwide effort to curb air pollution, state media reported.
The directive issued by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh applies to the area inside and along the main ring road that encircles the centre of Hanoi. The local government has been tasked with phasing out the two-wheelers by the deadline.
Like the rest of Vietnam, motorcycles are the main mode of transport for most of Hanoi's 8 million residents. The city has nearly 7 million motorcycles and just over a million cars. But as incomes rise and more people switch to private vehicles, air pollution from traffic has become a growing concern. Hanoi is often enveloped in thick smog, ranking among the most polluted cities worldwide.
Vietnam also wants to switch from fossil-fuel to electric vehicles to cut pollution and tackle climate change. Local EV maker VinFast is leading the shift by holding nearly a fifth of the market share, according to the European Chamber of Commerce. But it still has only a small share of the two-wheeler market.
But many are concerned about the unclear plan for phasing out the vehicles.
Nguyen Van Hung, 62, has spent three decades driving a motorcycle taxi in Hanoi, now working with Grab, a ride-hailing app widely used across Southeast Asia. He worries the ban will hit the working class hardest.
It will affect people who rely on motorbikes to earn a living, he said, pointing to delivery drivers, commuters and ride-hailing services. How can people just discard their vehicles?
Others said that the timeline was unrealistic. Hoang Duy Dung, 32, an office clerk who works in the city centre, said he supports cleaner air but believes it is too soon. We need better public transport and more support before such a big change.
Central Hanoi is home to much of the city's business activity, including offices, government buildings and commercial hubs.
A second phase, set to begin in January 2028, will expand the ban to a wider area and include all fossil-fuel two-wheelers, while also restricting some gasoline-powered cars.
Other measures include upgrading waste-treatment plants, using digital tools to monitor pollution and introducing stricter penalties for violators. Whistleblowers could be rewarded for reporting environmental breaches.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Indian Express
4 minutes ago
- Indian Express
SAP opens new campus in Bengaluru, its second-largest R&D hub outside Germany
SAP opened its new campus in Bengaluru on Tuesday, marking it as the company's second-largest R&D hub outside its headquarters in Germany. The India Innovation Park, as it is called, is located in Devanahalli, in the northern part of the city, close to Bengaluru's international airport. The 41-acre campus will be developed in multiple phases. Currently, 27 acres have been built and are operational. Once the entire facility is complete, it will have the capacity to accommodate up to 14,000 people. At present, 3,200 SAP employees have already moved in, and an additional 4,500 employees are expected to relocate during the first phase. The phase two of the campus has already been approved, and construction will begin soon, with a targeted completion by the Q2 or Q3 of 2028. The total cost of building the campus exceeds 194 million euros. This is SAP's second campus in Bengaluru, with the first located in the Whitefield area of the city. 'The [Innovation Park] is designed to bring together our customers, partners, academia, startups, and communities. For us, this is the beating heart of co-innovation,' said Sindhu Gangadharan, MD of SAP Labs India and Head of Customer Innovation Services at SAP, while addressing hundreds of employees, partners, and government representatives at the inauguration. Software maker SAP is the latest major tech company to expand in India and increase its footprint in Bengaluru, now the world's fourth-largest tech cluster after Silicon Valley, Boston, and London. Earlier this year, Google opened its new campus in Bengaluru, while Microsoft is setting up its largest R&D center in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. More and more tech companies are expanding their presence in India by setting up either Research & Development centers or Global Capability Centers (GCCs). Once considered low-cost outsourcing hubs for global firms, these GCCs centers have evolved significantly over the past few years by supporting their parent organisations by handling a wide range of business functions and specialising in areas such as IT, automation, and manufacturing. Bengaluru is home to 875 GCCs and accounts for 34 per cent of India's GCC workforce. According to a report by IT industry body Nasscom and consulting firm Zinnov, released late last year, the market size of India's GCC sector is expected to grow from $64.6 billion in fiscal 2024 to between $99 billion and $105 billion by 2030. In March, SAP became Europe's most valuable listed company, overtaking French luxury group LVMH and Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk in market capitalisation, after pivoting its business toward cloud computing and seizing opportunities in artificial intelligence. SAP generates the majority of its revenue from cloud services and is focused on leveraging AI to drive efficiencies for businesses. The company offers enterprise products across cloud solutions, expense management, supply chain management, and analytics. SAP's products are used by over 440,000 customers worldwide, including 98 of the world's 100 largest companies. Taken altogether, its client base generates over 80 per cent of global commerce, according to the company. SAP has over 17,000 employees spread across Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Delhi in India. The 53-year-old German tech giant has over 40 per cent of its global R&D workforce in India.

Mint
35 minutes ago
- Mint
Stock zoom: Novo's plight offers a lesson on managing market expectations
Next Story Chris Hughes This maker of weight-loss drugs saw its share price zoom and then crash. The CEO has been replaced. The incoming boss will have to be careful not to let market hype get in the way of steady success. It's best to under-promise and over-deliver. Novo's blind spot has been failing to see its share price as an asset to manage—and exploit. Gift this article Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk saw its shares take a record plunge last week, sending their peak-to-trough collapse to 70% and returning them to levels last seen in 2022. Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk saw its shares take a record plunge last week, sending their peak-to-trough collapse to 70% and returning them to levels last seen in 2022. The Danish drug giant's purpose may be to improve people's lives, but investors' shrinking gains from its opening of the anti-obesity market matter too. Novo's blind spot has been failing to see its share price as an asset to manage—and exploit. For years, Novo had a relatively quiet life as one member of an insulin oligopoly alongside US peer Eli Lilly & Company and France's Sanofi. While it wasn't a completely smooth ride—2016 was dire—Novo has never seen operational and strategic challenges on the scale it's now facing. In developing Ozempic for diabetes and its sibling Wegovy for weight loss, the company suddenly found itself riding a tiger. Both firms face competition from 'compounding' copycat drugs based on similar chemistry. Shares in the more diversified Eli Lilly have held up better. On a five-year view, Novo is still the world's third-best performing big pharma stock after Eli Lilly and Abbvie. Perhaps if it had made a steadier journey to this point, instead of more than trebling in just over two years before its subsequent slide, there'd have been no drama. Try telling that to Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen. He has been replaced as CEO. The giddy trajectory raises two questions related to what might grubbily be called share-price management. First, Novo should not have let market expectations run away. At issue here was the confidence it expressed that a successor to Wegovy, CagriSema, would achieve 25% weight reduction. This long-held view within the company was expressed even a few weeks before trial data came in at 22.7% in December. That was still impressive, but the stock market was disappointed. Its shares tumbled amid concern that the shortfall would further weaken Novo's competitive position. Company leadership is often overly preoccupied with how to get a share price up. But boards should worry about the stock price in both directions. As the cliché goes: under-promise and over-deliver. Some may say a company can't and shouldn't try to control its share price. But that doesn't let Novo off the hook. Should it not have taken advantage of the strength of its shares by using them as a currency to make an acquisition? That was an opportunity even before the price went into overdrive. Novo could have diversified, say, by buying a biotech firm focused on related areas such heart disease. Instead, Novo's fortunes have yoked largely to Wegovy. The stated objectives for the Novo investment include 'contributing positively to the lives of people" and 'generating competitive long-term financial results." That doesn't mean Novo the foundation or Novo the drugmaker ignores ordinary shareholders. The foundation says it has an 'arm's length relationship" with Novo Nordisk, which in turn is governed by an independent board. It also says it's 'particularly mindful of observing and respecting the rights of other shareholders." Nor has the foundation been passive. It sought the CEO change. And last year it struck a major deal to expand capacity. But the general idea that a long-term anchor shareholder is a good thing needs some qualification. Novo's ownership structure and sheer size protect it from a takeover or shareholder activism: These are the twin threats that otherwise focus boards' attention on their stock price. For a controlling shareholder with an indefinite investment horizon, the short-term share price—whether a bubble is inflating or deflating— is unlikely to be of much concern. In turn, such governance is more likely a brake than a spur to doing anything opportunistic, especially if it involves issuing stock that might change the power dynamics. Small wonder that Novo has historically avoided transformational dealmaking in favour of commercial partnerships and small bolt-ons. Also read: How Ozempic's maker lost its grip on the obesity market it created Long-term business value determines the share price over time. In the meantime, though, markets need to be managed as much as the business. A firm's stock is a resource. New CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar says he doesn't like what happened to the share price. Maybe he gets it. ©Bloomberg Topics You May Be Interested In Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

The Wire
6 hours ago
- The Wire
Vinfast Inaugurates Electric Vehicle Assembly Plant in Tamil Nadu, India
Tamil Nadu, India (NewsVoir) VinFast today officially inaugurated its electric vehicle (EV) assembly plant at the SIPCOT Industrial Park in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, India. This milestone marks a major step in VinFast's global expansion, reinforcing the company's long-term commitment to the world's third-largest automobile market and underscoring VinFast's confidence in India's strategic role in the future of the global EV industry. VinFast Tamil Nadu is the company's third operational plant and the fifth project in its global manufacturing network. As the first VinFast facility inaugurated outside Vietnam, it demonstrates both the brand's global vision and its capacity to deliver large-scale projects. With a total area of 400 acres, the plant is equipped with state-of-the-art production lines meeting world-class standards, featuring advanced automation and cutting-edge technologies. The complex houses multiple workshops, including Body Shop, Paint Shop, Assembly Shop, Quality Control Center, and a Logistics Hub. It also includes an auxiliary cluster for local contractors, which is expected to expand in the coming years. At full capacity, the plant will create 3,000-3,500 direct jobs for local workers, along with thousands of indirect jobs in the supply chain ecosystem. This will help boost socio-economic development in Tamil Nadu, positioning the state as a manufacturing hub for India and a potential EV capital of South Asia in the near future. In its initial phase, VinFast Tamil Nadu will focus on assembling two premium electric SUV models: the VF 7 and VF 6. The plant's starting capacity is 50,000 vehicles per year, scalable up to 150,000 units annually to meet rising market demand. With the launch of the Tamil Nadu plant, VinFast moves closer to its 2025 sales target of 200,000 vehicles and its long-term production goal of 1 million vehicles per year by 2030. This milestone reaffirms VinFast's commitment to promoting sustainable mobility and advancing a greener future in India and worldwide. Speaking on the inauguration, Mr. Pham Sanh Chau, CEO of VinFast Asia, stated, 'The VinFast Tamil Nadu plant marks a strategic milestone in our long-term commitment to the Indian market. It establishes a strong foundation for sustainable growth and positions us to offer high-quality, competitively priced electric vehicles to Indian consumers. Looking ahead, the facility will expand its production capacity to meet rising demand. We aim to develop it into VinFast's largest export hub for South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In fact, we've already secured initial orders from several countries across these regions. In close collaboration with the Tamil Nadu government, VinFast is working to transform the area into the 'EV capital of South Asia'—supporting both the dynamic domestic market and our broader regional ambitions.' VinFast Tamil Nadu not only strengthens the company's global production capability but also contributes significantly to India's green industrial development. The plant will prioritize collaboration with domestic suppliers, promoting supply chain localization, technology transfer, and workforce upskilling. Since entering India, VinFast has actively pursued a comprehensive EV ecosystem model covering assembly, distribution, after-sales services, and recycling, with the 400-acres Tamil Nadu plant being a strategic piece in this value chain. In parallel, VinFast has partnered with multiple dealer groups in key cities and teamed up with RoadGrid, myTVS, and Global Assure to build a robust digital services and after-sales support network. VinFast has also joined forces with BatX Energies to enable battery recovery and reuse, advancing circular production and sustainable development in the world's third-largest automobile market. About VinFast VinFast (NASDAQ: VFS), a subsidiary of Vingroup JSC, one of Vietnam's largest conglomerates, is a pure-play electric vehicle ('EV') manufacturer with the mission of making EVs accessible to everyone. VinFast's product lineup today includes a wide range of electric SUVs, e-scooters, and e-buses. VinFast is currently embarking on its next growth phase through rapid expansion of its distribution and dealership network globally and increasing its manufacturing capacities with a focus on key markets across North America, Europe and Asia. Learn more at This is an auto-published feed from PTI with no editorial input from The Wire.