What&#x27;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.<p>VW seem to have <i>convinced themselves</i> that they didn&#x27;t need to look at other ways of achieving clean(er) engines.  Which suggests an element of truth to the idea there was a &quot;climate of fear&quot; under the now-resigned CEO; it would be typical of a couple of companies I&#x27;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.