> Sure people care about the environment, but it is always lower than all the other factors in their personal list of things they worry about.

Emissions scale with performance, and inversely of fuel efficiency. So the environment may not be the most important point, but I'm pretty sure fuel efficiency is high on the list when you're picking a compact or long-range car that is supposed to be fuel efficient.

Also, by advertising as compliant to green specs something that wasn't, means people may have been swayed to purchase irregular cars despite them not being really green, only due to the fact that they may have received rebates and contributions for the purchase, regardless of whether "being greener" ranked high on their decision metrics.