What's interesting to me is that it almost seems like VW fooled themselves: they aggressively pooh-poohed alternatives (hybrid, electic). BMW and Porsche (now

What's interesting to me is that it almost seems like VW fooled themselves: they aggressively pooh-poohed alternatives (hybrid, electic). BMW and Porsche (now a WV subsidiary, I acknowledge) have been working on both those options, chasing Toyota in the former. VW seem to have convinced themselves that they didn't need to look at other ways of achieving clean(er) engines. Which suggests an element of truth to the idea there was a "climate of fear" under the now-resigned CEO; it would be typical of a couple of companies I've contracted to, where phenominal amounts of money were pissed away because it was career-ending to tell the truth about a particular strategy not working.