You might want to look a bit more into ISDS.. it's an international court which is agreed to in various trade treaties and allows corporations to sue foreign governments where that governments policies negatively affect the corporation.

One of the big concerns with TTP/TTIP is that they will expand the use and applicability of ISDS processes and this could impact things like environmental legislation.

Part of the concern about the use of ISDS is that the hearings are generally held in secret.

In this case I guess if it could be proven that the US government disadvantaged VW by applying fines to them whilst not prosecuting other companies who have done similar things, then if ISDS applies to this trade, it may be possible for VW to sue...

Only in those situations where the US government can be proven to have access to the same level of proof that fraud is being committed compared to the information they had on VW. Chances of success of such an operation: 0. Effect on the PR situation: -10000. Likelihood of engaging in such an action by VW: 0.

Anybody except for VW would be in a position to make a move regarding other manufacturers, according to a document linked elsewhere from a German auto magazine there is plenty of reason to suspect that other manufacturers are engaging in similar practices but nobody to date has proof.

Eh, the original document from WVU which the EPA used to go against VW also names evidence for several (I think 6) other manufacturers, by now, 9 are known to have done the same.

So, yes, it’s trivial to show that the EPA had the same amount of knowledge against others as they had against VW, because the original document already had that.

The original document from WVU detailed 3 vehicles, two by VW an one by BMW.

If you want an easy to digest article on the subject please read:

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/09/23/researcher-how-vw-got-cau...

And if you want less easy to digest material go read the actual study pdfs (they're linked in the wikipedia article on 'dieselgate' and are very interesting reading but it will take some time there are 100+ pages there).

So you are way off base with the claims in this comment.

Note that the WVU report does not state that evidence of a cheating device has been found. It was merely the catalyst (pun intended) in the whole affair causing the EPA to put a much bigger effort into the VW engine than they had up to that point and this is where the cheating device was uncovered.

The I in ISDS is for "not in the US civil court system", so the big unknown is how it will work there. I'd still bet a lot on nothing in that direction happen in the current VW case, but some uncertainty remains.