Exactly. They did something technically correct, AND something which put the interests of their customers ahead of idiot regulators, and this makes them BAD guys?????? How many companies do you see that put their customers first, and protect them against runaway goobermint?? They should get a parade, not detained.
Obviously I understand the goober-drones being angry with them, but even normal people (those whose income supports the goobermint rather than the reverse) seem to view this as a bad thing. I don't get it.
Hyperbole fatigue, most likely. The media has been pummeling VW/Audi to the point where the public now thinks that TDI engines cause global warming, earthquakes and the heartbreak of Psoriasis. Since most people have no idea what actually occurs inside an internal-combustion engine, they just take every word as uncontested and factual.
And then there's George Carlin's observation, which definitely rings true in many cases:
"... I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me."