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The Italian antitrust agency Competition Authority (AGCM) announced on June 20 that it had fined local car company DR Automobiles and its subsidiaries 6 million euros on the grounds that DR Automobiles was suspected of fraudulent commercial propaganda by branding some Chinese-made cars under DR and EVO brands.

According to the AGCM survey, DR Automobiles has claimed that the cars it sells have been made in Italy since at least December 2021, but they are actually made in China, with only a small amount of finishing and completion work in Italy. The vehicles are sold under the DR and EVO brands, a fraudulent practice that coincides with booming sales of DR and EVO cars in the Italian market.

Nielsen, a world-famous market monitoring and data analysis company, surveyed Italians' views on local brands in 2016, and only 16% of Italians clearly liked Italian car brands. 58% of Italians clearly like car brands from other countries, and the rest don't care where the car brands come from. As a result, Italian brands are not popular in Italy. Of course, the above survey results are many years ago.

According to the data, Italian car sales in 2023 were 1.566 million, an increase of 19% over the same period last year. Fiat, the local brand with the highest sales volume, sold 174900 vehicles in the whole year, down 2.5% from the same period last year, with a market share of 11%. But it is a brand with a market share of more than 10%. Volkswagen (122800 vehicles), Toyota (98700 vehicles), Dacia (85600 vehicles), Ford (81700 vehicles), Peugeot (79800 vehicles), all with a market share of more than 5%, all achieved year-on-year growth.

After introducing the basic situation of Italian cars, let's introduce DR Automobiles. DR Automobiles is a well-known Italian car brand, but its popularity is obviously lower than that of Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini, Fiat and other brands, because DR cars are not made in Italy, but are built by Chinese carmaker Chery and have reached an agreement with DR Automobiles to produce vehicles in the way of CKD in Molisse, so we can see that most of the prototype cars produced by DR Automobiles at present In fact, they all come from Chery Automobile. According to the official website, DR Automobiles models currently on sale include DR 1.0 EV, DR 3.0, DR 5.0, DR 6.0 PHEV, DR PK8, of which the first five models are all owned by Chery Automobile, while the corresponding models are Xiao Ant, Ruihu 3x, Ruihu e, Ruihu 5x, Ruihu 7 PLUS,DR PK8 are from Jianghuai Automobile, that is, Jianghuai T8 pickup truck. For example, the DR 3.0, known as the Chery 3x, is priced at 499-84900 yuan in China and 18400 euros, or 140000 yuan, in Italy, while the Fiat 500 is priced at 17400 euros, compared with the DR 3.0.

Figures show that DR Automobiles sold 25300 cars in Italy in 2023, second only to Alfa Romeo's 26900, surpassing MINI's 18800 and Volvo's 16900. It is understood that DR Automobiles has successively introduced Beijing Automobile and Jianghuai car models into the Italian market between 2020 and 2023, focusing on the low-price market.

In October 2023, DR Automobiles was subject to an antitrust investigation by the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM). According to AGCM, DR Automobiles mistakenly conveyed information about where some of its models were manufactured. The company, which is headquartered in the Morrisse region of southern Italy, assembles economy cars in Italy using parts from Chinese carmakers such as Chery, JAC and BAIC. The allegations came amid surging sales of DR and EVO, selling about 24000 cars in Italy in the first nine months of 2023, an increase of 48 per cent compared with the same period. AGCM said that in some cases, DR may imply that their cars are made entirely in Italy when in fact they are made in China.

At present, DR Automobiles was fined 6 million euros (46.67 million yuan) by the Italian antitrust agency Competition Administration (AGCM) for allegedly fraudulent commercial propaganda by labeling some Chinese-made cars under the DR and EVO brands.

In fact, it is very common in the automobile industry to produce vehicles in the way of CKD. CKD is widely used in the automotive industry. CKD imports or introduces cars in a completely disassembled state, and then assembles all the parts of the car into complete vehicles, in order to reduce costs and improve local production capacity, while the production of CKD parts requires local production capacity, which can promote local economic development and increase employment.

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