IMHO – Modern day cars don’t achieve sticker promised fuel efficiency promises in real life on real roads anymore.
If they did, there would be less general commentary in the motoring press on the gap between sticker and real life and I would not have experienced this personally in a variety of cars from a multiple manufacturers.
Testing regimes therefore seem to be flawed as they  don’t achieve their core promise which is to simulate real world driving conditions on behalf of the consumer. 
Therefore, the degree to which this VW and BMW thing “exceeds” “regulations” should be kept in perspective given we all “know” that the numbers are nowadays “wrong” as evidenced by our inability to ever achieve the promises of the new car fuel efficiency sticker.

– question: what does it mean for an organisation if they choose to allow themselves to adhere to “rules” that dont match reality?

– question: what does it say about a regulatory authority when it knows thats its core processes and deliverables are broken even though its cause is noble?

– question: what regulatory environment are the market participants actually operating in? The formal or informal?

– CP: follow the cash back to who benefits from this mess
– #vanitymetrics
Lots of articles on this item. Example http://flip.it/VxGg4