Late to the party but I’ll chip in my anecdotal evidence of the local Hungry Jacks that looked like this up until circa 2021:
It was then fully renovated and my immediate reaction was just, what have they done… I don’t have a picture of that particular HJs post reno but they all literally look the same seldom floorplan, so here’s one with identical design language.
The old one almost felt like an American diner with the red glistening seats, the ceiling neons, the diamond tiled floors.
This is the only official word from Volkswagen in the whole article. To me, this reads less as “We are blocking GrapheneOS users” and instead “GrapheneOS is not something we give any official support” which I think is a key distinction.
It’s not clear what’s different in the update that doesn’t work with GrapheneOS, whether it’s an API call that doesn’t work or if they’ve implemented the Play Integrity API - but I think this article is a bit sensationalist and everyone’s reacted only to the headline.