For a couple of years now, I have been reading sporadic articles about unrealistic test cycles and the cheating of the car industry to seem cleaner than life. A EU initiative to tighten the rules for the emission test was killed by Germany on the lobbying of its car industry.
The cars I drove myself always consumed much more than advertised. Yet, I drive like an anti-Schumacher. No speeding tickets ever, my challenge is to almost never use the breaks.
It must have been obvious to everyone, private and institutional, that the official consumptions and emissions were totally fake.
Volkswagen probably went just a bit further at faking their numbers.
Now the lynch mob goes after them. The CEO resigned, the mob wants to strip him of his wealth. VW is sacking managers, countries are starting criminal investigations, VW has to recall millions of cars to upgrade their software (and thus degrade the car performance).
Articles appear that state the obvious: regulators knew, politicians knew, we knew.
Go buy a Tesla and get over it.
Just like when we ‘learned’ that basically all athletes used doping, but had to strip their medals when it became official that they did.
Are you really surprised? Is your VW now worse?