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The problem affects only diesel cars, and VW is the only company I've heard of selling a significant number of diesel passenger cars in the US.

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There are other countries in the world, and in some of those countries, there are significant numbers of diesel passenger cars.

European emission standards are lax, and I would imagine the rest of the world even laxer.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-23/no-cheatin...

Like anything it's a trade off.

Emissions and efficiency are usually conflicting goals. Automakers are under a ton of strain right now to achieve BOTH, which is essentially impossible. The VW TDIs are some of the only vehicles to even get close to the efficiency that will be required in just a few years, regardless of emissions.

Except that poor air quality has a severe impact on people.

Poor is relative. Even a "bad" car by current standards would have been considered extremely clean even 5 years ago.

No. The VWs in question would not have even passed 1981 CARB standards.

For what it's worth, Chevy is selling a diesel version of the Cruze in the US, and it has better performance numbers pretty much all around than the VW. I'm skeptical of the claims that this is "the end of clean diesel" as a result.

Maybe you should be sceptical that Chevy are more honest than VW.

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