VW is large enough that different parts of the company can have very different opinions.

That itself though speaks for a broken company culture. If one part of the company is completely disaligned with the values of good engineering, why should anyone still trust the company as a whole? It seems they at the very least severely lack a good vision then, to uphold the company values or what should be the company values.

I mean, the app services department doesn't exactly have a track record of perfect compliance (privacy) either, so there is that.