‘Driving is terrifying’: auto-mobility horizons, projections and networks in Vietnam and ASEAN

This article examines the emerging infrastructure and market for automobiles in Vietnam as it transitions from a long history of motorbike mobility following Đổi Mới market renovation and peaking after the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Considering the context of recent free trade Agreements including the ASEAN Free Trade Area that are opening Vietnam’s markets to automobile imports and causing Vietnamese domestic car manufacturers to reconsider their production and marketing strategies, I argue that anticipations of impending transportation and mobility transformations are being undertaken on multiple yet intersecting levels. Understanding these intersections through the lens of stakeholder knowledges, projections and affects – ranging from those of potential automobile consumers to specialists and strategists laboring in future mobility and automotive design labs, offers insight into the agencies and contingencies of actors and actants participating within infrastructural networks that are reshaping mobility behaviors and options. Interventions to recuperate and connect the often atomized agents within modal mobility production assemblages will be critical to influence the infrastructural contours of transportation development in emerging markets like Vietnam, and promote a sustainability model that goes beyond technological innovation and upgrade consumption.