Are they exempt? At least one state, I believe it was Mass has a law on the book allowing work. Of course we need independent repairs (and training to do it properly) on EVs. There are a few repair garages for Teslas that seem to be people who used to work at Tesla, they fix wonky things on battery packs sometimes.
Exempt from requiring an ODB port that outputs the narrow scope ODB data.
They are mainly exempt because most of that data is emissions related. ODB came about due to CA requiring lower emissions and smog checks. They needed a way to quickly and cheaply verify it independently of the manufacturer. Unfortunately, in VWs case, the law assumed the data isn't modified before being sent.