They are. They're also heating indoors up to 4x more efficiently than the best alternative. Nobody is opposing AC cooling for efficiency.

The resistence to cooling with AC comes from way before HP became popular and remains, somehow. Part of it is because it's perceived as a luxury (while heating is not), partly because being relatively uncommon until recently its surprising for some people and therefore the perceived cause of illnesses and malaise.

It'll go away. Because it's really vitally important, and because air/air HPs are perfect trojan horses to normalize AC cooling.

.. That being said, I had to call 3 companies in Germany before I even found one willing to sell me a air/air HP. And the cooling function has to be carefully ignored if you want it subsidized.