in CA they don't even fugging check now because running the car creates too many greenhouse gases, lol. They start it and if it doesn't present any problems they look under the hood and charge you 60 bucks. A true racket.
60 is cheap..... the sad thing is the shop only sees about $10-15 from that test, they actually loose money if an independent shop like my buddies. he pays his tech more an hour than he makes on the smog.
And your right, on vehicles equipped with OBD2 computers they plug it in, if the ECM clears all system checks then it passes, visual inspection pending... It really is a racket, especially in 2010 when they implemented diesel smogs, there never was a sniff test, and they passed a law in 2010 that forced 1998 and newer vehicles to be tested and have CARB compliant parts that didn't exist cause NON-CARB parts were legal for installation... so over night they made thousands and thousands of trucks illegal and forced them to either do a illegal hot smog or go back to stock... It was illegal as all can be but somehow they magically do it cause of the tree hugging f-tards in this state... I gotta be careful or I'll type stuff that will get me kicked off the forum
Fought them years and the only good thing was SEMA extended me a invitation to SEMA in 2009 for being a member of SAN (SEMA Action Network )