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Would You Pay $700, Plus a Monthly Fee, For a Digital License Plate? (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's been a few weeks now since a Bay Area startup put a digital license plate on my car. So far, nobody seems to have noticed. I haven't yet been pulled aside by police or civilians asking what it is. At first glance, this electronic device looks exactly like a traditional, stamped metal license plate. The new digital plate has the same scripted CALIFORNIA icon up top and uses the exact same size and font to show the numbers and letters. But in actuality, what I have is an "Rplate," a $700 plate-sized Kindle-like screen on the back of my car -- high-contrast grayscale e-ink and all. The device also contains an RFID and GPS chip that allow me to see where my car is at any given moment, to voluntarily track my trips, and to even optionally display DMV-approved customized messages in a small font below the plate number itself.
Were I an actual paying customer, I'd be paying $7 per month in a service fee, too, mostly to offset the data connection to Verizon. The one-time $700 price tag alone is a bit high for me. To be clear, I have a loaner model, and by the time this story comes out, I'll soon be sending the plate back to the company, Reviver. The model I've been using is one of the first 1,000 such plates that are legally out on California roads right now. Still, after my experience of a few weeks, there's no clear and compelling case to be made as to why most of us non-rich individuals need this fancy plate. Also, there are still unanswered questions about its security and what it means to voluntarily hand over so much personal location data to a single company.
Were I an actual paying customer, I'd be paying $7 per month in a service fee, too, mostly to offset the data connection to Verizon. The one-time $700 price tag alone is a bit high for me. To be clear, I have a loaner model, and by the time this story comes out, I'll soon be sending the plate back to the company, Reviver. The model I've been using is one of the first 1,000 such plates that are legally out on California roads right now. Still, after my experience of a few weeks, there's no clear and compelling case to be made as to why most of us non-rich individuals need this fancy plate. Also, there are still unanswered questions about its security and what it means to voluntarily hand over so much personal location data to a single company.
NO.
Hell No.
Like *Pay ME* to wear it. You know - like like.
... optionally display DMV-approved customized messages in a small font below the plate number itself.
"Sucker on board."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because!! Thatâ(TM)s why!
I would get one of these, if it let switch between other license plates that weren't registered in my name.
Why would anyone do this?
im sorry but $700 for a waterproof e-ink tablet... is what you are paying for...
this is stupid, the price should be below $100, expecially if they want to mass produce it.. AND covered by rego costs.
and as you have the SAME result with a metal plate, with NO monthly fee, anyone who buys this is plain idiotic and is just doing it for attention.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
You not only agree to be tracked everywhere you drive, but you pay $700 plus a monthly fee for the privilege? Are you sure you heard them right?
* Too much money for tool little return; that's government, all right.
* "chip that allow me to see where my car is at any given moment". Pissing in your mouth and telling you it's rain; that's Government, all right.
For $700/month they can have my plates and the whole back of my van e-inked to advertise whatever they like!
Your summary lists a bunch of reasons not to get one of these (high price, monthly fee, tracked, etc), but you don't list a single positive feature, and I can't envision any. It seems to be all negatives without a single positive.
That's a stupid retort. The whole thing is premised on a shit governmental system.
Seriously... Free e-ink display!! I would totally steal your number plate.
I just need like 20 plates to make one big screen. Then I can read my kindle from my sofa whilst it's on my wall. Perfect.
I don't want to pay extra money to put a GPS tracking device on my car. I bet they will start issuing speeding citations based on these devices.
However, it might be something a parent would want to put on their teenage child's car. Hopefully in exchange for a discount on the car insurance.
This story was posted with this Slashdot-icon:
https://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/t...
This graphic is the logo for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). This company was a Really Big Deal decades ago - in fact, I bet a lot of Slashdot readers were formerly employed by DEC. Citation needed?
Although the DEC logo uses the word "digital", it does not represent all things that are digital. Putting this label on a story about something "digital" is like putting Mickey Mouse ears on any story involving animation. It's just not correct, and it's a bit abrasive to the brain.
Could the editors stop using this icon unless it's a story related to the Corporation Fomerly Known as DEC?
With the data they are collecting they should be paying your vehicle registration, maybe the vehicle insurance. And if you’re an influencer maybe your car payments. They are collecting a lot of valuable data. They should be paying you.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
I would GLADLY pay $700 if
- the license plate means I will not be stopped for merely exceeding the posted speed limit. I've "prepaid my fine" and so long as I'm not in an accident the license plate is a license to exceed that limit.
- I can display messages at my heart's content, so if the person behind me doesn't understand safe following distances I can smartphone-app a message to the license plate... something polite.... of course.
Other than those two options, LoJac is a lot cheaper, and a hard physical license plate can *NEVER* fail, so I won't be stopped for not having a plate. An electronic one has a great-than-zero chance so the odds are infinite that they WILL fail. I don't want to be stopped.
E
Comment removed based on user account deletion
e-ink is too slow to switch license number upon the flash from the speed camera - so what is the point?
I don't understand. Why would anyone do this?
Well today I had the experience that would encourage many to embrace this new high tech solution. Today I had to find a screw driver and remove the four screws securing the license and its frame to the car. I had to wipe the license with a wet towel to remove some of the grime before putting a new registration sticker on top of the old, then going through the misery of aligning screws with threads four times to reattach everything.
All of this annual ugliness could be performed much more elegantly digitally. The DMV charges my credit card, the charge clears, it then could send an updated registration sticker image to the digital plate for its display.
$700 at time of car purchase and $84 a year thereafter, worth it to avoid the preceding messiness.
"The device also contains an RFID and GPS chip that allow ANYONE WHO CAN GAIN ACCESS TO THE REMOTE SERVER to see where my car is at any given moment, to voluntarily track my trips, and to even optionally display DMV-approved customized messages in a small font below the plate number itself. "
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
It has an internet connection for no reason.
It answers to a for profit company.
It connects a TON of PIM to another DB.
Malfunctions lead to interactions with police.
It's tech bolted to the outside of your car.
When it goes, you get to interact with a scared and twitchy psychopath with a gun. FUN!
Screams "Moneyed elite" louder than a gold plated model year Tesla.
A staggering amount of bad shit potential.
Rich people a dumb.
Not even if the plate read "California needs Lex Luthor's nuclear missle!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
I'm not sure that Digital Equipment Corporation has anything to do with this one, since they died around 20 years ago.
You want to pay $700 for a geotracker snooping device disguised as a license plate? uh, no thank you.
Bay area startup high on crystal meth going out of business in 3...2...1.
Rplate Pro users can rest assured that their data â" especially usage/telematics information â" is never shared with the DMV, law enforcement, or any other third party.
Telematics data is not uploaded to Reviver Autoâ(TM)s US-based cloud infrastructure and is not available when the user turns off the functionality from their app or our Rconnect website. The telematics data belongs to the user and is never sold to third parties.
ZOMG Finally a company who respects their customers!!1!!!!!!
Now lets go see what their real privacy policy has to say about this:
We may collect a variety of information from the products that are deployed on your vehicle, via remote access, during our delivery or receipt of content or information to your products, or during in-person service, including:
Data regarding the performance, usage, operation, and condition of the products, including product serial number, geographical location.
Trip logs, including start / end times for trips
We may use information that we collect through the product and services for a variety of purposes, including
To send you promotional material or special offers on our behalf or on behalf of our marketing partners
We may use or share information that does not personally identify you, including, as examples, de-identified or anonymized data, for any purpose
We may disclose your information to third parties in order to comply with a legal obligation (including, but not limited to, subpoenas and warrants);
Shocked disbelief... what ... a surprise... didn't see THAT coming...
Ditch the quadracyclic terrestrial transport vehicles. For basic transportation, nothing beats horse & wagon.
You mean you're going to pay to have other people track you? If they want to track you so bad why not just make them pay?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
So for $700 and $84 a year, you no longer have to put the new date sticker on the plate (but how about the front plate?) That saves 2 minutes every year.
Could change plate picture when you want.
can add a message to the plate. I would put on it MAGA.
Tracking information, though an app for your phone could do that also.
How hard is it to take off? (stolen)
This is just throwing money away.
Are these PDP-11s or VAXen or what? And what type?
Oh, and what year does the purchase happen? (Because in 2018 I wouldn't pay $700 for the awesomest VAX ever.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Great idea. No potential for abuse nor any other problem. We need more of these companies and products. Godspeed you! Belligerent Emperor.
I'd totally pay for something luke that displays random stuff and trolls other drivers plus a free SIM card with $7/month unlimited data plan. I'll take 3*2 for all my cars!
Only if forced to by government legislation. Or is that what the article is implying will eventually happen?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
IIRC, this isn't the first time that California has had an option for an expensive, unnecessary upgrade for license plates (other than vanity ones). I believe they used to offer a license plate with reflective material embedded in the paint that made them more visible in the dark. While potentially safer (those behind could potentially see you sooner with their headlight reflection), they did cost extra, and the regular license plates met all of the legal visibility requirements anyway.
Second point: Since when did the logo for the now-absorbed company Digital Equipment Corporation become /.'s icon for generic digital things? That just seems wrong.
Could I press a button on my dash and have it flip the bird at the guy behind me for a brief second?
Can you customize it to have custom pictures, plate numbers, or text?
If not, it's pointless.
Are these PDP-11s or VAXen or what? And what type?
In any case, they're certainly trailing edge...
some charismatic character will come along promising utopia and millions of morons in big cities will vote him into office and he will make it a law that everybody MUST buy a $700 dollar digital license plate. He'll promise that "if you like your old license plate, you can keep it" but that will be a bold lie; he will sign a law that makes you buy the very expensive one, yet gives them away for free to the poor. If you're in the middle and would feel pain from paying for your $700 plate but are not poor enough to qualify for the free one, you will be hit with a huge fine for failing to buy one.
It's "for the children" AND "to save the planet" (but probably really just to help Google with its monetized spying, and Google will rotate hundreds of its employees through the White House during the term of that future President).
Oh, don't worry, that sort of thing would NEVER happen in America.... (at least not without "fundamentally transforming" the place first...)
Why not just have it self service? Users print their plate and tape it to their window? The idea of plates seems a bit dated.
I would remove the gps chip and add my own digital controller.
At 700 I'm fairly certain I can have this fabbed in china.
...and that's just the issues you'll have dealing with the company you pay. If they ever get hacked it could be a lot worse since it seems the system is in constant contact via the cell phone network. I expect any hacker would have some fun reprogramming the displays.
Would You Pay $700, Plus a Monthly Fee, For a Digital License Plate?
No. Hell no. Absolutely, positively no.
Forget the digital license plate, remake the whole car !!
Re-make the entire car into one which can change its appearance (color, _and_ shape) at a press of a button.
I would definitely get one !!
so I don't use a license plate. I just replace my car instead of renewing my registration.
You Americans keep saying this, yet nothing I read about the USA leads me to believe this is true.
Is this one of those things like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is actually the opposite of a Democracy?
Silocon Valley products are mostly for losers and for hipster rich pricks.
Or atleast messages to other drivers?
Officer: Do you know why I pulled you over?
Driver: No officer.
Officer: Your license plate has a dead pixel.
Driver: I didn't know. I'll fix it right away.
Officer: Sure. Now can I search your car?
Driver: No. Why? Am I being detained?
***ugh...mmmf...ouch!***
Driver: Don't tase me, bro!
Officer: Stop resisting arrest!!!
For something worse for me than a traditional liicense plate, but better for them?
Wait, me pay them?!?! That's backward. And of course not.
What's good in having this?
Looks like the only benefit is tracking. That can be achieved a zillion ways that are much cheaper and are placed at a better protected location on the vehicle.
How much you pay for insurance? Having a 700$ thing that's destroyed first when I am rear-ended does not sound a great idea...
Vajk
Is it that some people have more money than sense? You guys who drool over shit like this, surely you KNOW that your smartphone, (which if you have ANY interest in this, I KNOW you have one of,) CAN ALREADY DO THIS FOR YOU, right? There are a half dozen apps that come to mind. Google Maps For example has a feature that will automatically remember where you parked. I cannot understand what the point of this is.
This is like a $700 beer bottle opener that tells you how many beers you have drunk today, and tracks the calories for you. Except that you already KNOW how many beers you have drunk. There is a mathematical formula for that, that every beer-drinker instinctively knows. It is imbedded deep in your soul. But if you have forgotten...
Let us say x is the number of beers required to render you insensible, and n is some number between 0 and x, with a maximum value of x-1. If you are conscious, then you have consumed n beers, and the only way to ascertain whether n = x-1, is to drink a (or another if not the first) beer, and reevaluate consciousness. The beer-counting function of the $700 bottle opener is not only unneeded, it is a waste of money that could otherwise be used buying beer, to aid in recomputing the value of x for a given beer drinker on a given afternoon, evening, night, or in the case of a hardcore inebriatory researcher, morning. (For this value may change and therefore must be routinely reverified.). As for calories... if the drinker CARES about them, he or she should probably either NOT be drinking beer, or should alternatively drink a lot MORE of it.
The license plate thing is kind of similar to this, in that if you need one, you should not be driving in the first place, and if you WANT one, you need to be slapped upside the head with it.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Last thing we need is another way for gov to monitor or us. Criminals too
So... Why wouldn't you buy an RFID+GPS steering wheel that allows you to see where your car is and track your trips? Or maybe an RFID+GPS door handle, for the same reason? Or even an RFID+GPS whatever? Also: what is the advantage for you of displaying ads in your plate?
If you want to track your trip, buy a GPS device (or even better: use your phone, which already has a GPS). If you want to see where your car is, buy a location device (for much less than $700). This is nonsense.
Yeah! Not only is it ridiculously expensive, but now the authorities can presumably turn your license plate into a flashing orange beacon at their whim. Good thinking! *facepalm*
Clickety Click
If I was James Bond I might find a use for it
I always ask my self if the price on gadgets will improve my quality of life more than the amount of work it took to earn that money.
I can't possibly see how 700$ + a monthly fee.
You can buy a GPS tracker for less than 50$ that plugs into the ODB connector and I can get a SIM card for 4$ a month if tracking is what I want.
L'Idiot
And you loved it too.
So .... yeah, we, the industry, pretty much assume that you, the customer, go full retard all day every day.
And then there's this: http://sci-hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115
(Study, showing that by 1975 standards, we have an average IQ of about 70, making us literally full retards.)
But I would consider if they would pay me $700 initially and $7 each month.
The license plate is an official document. This is not made by the state so how is this even legal? Itâ(TM)s an illigetimate copy at best, forgery at worst. Nothing about it is permanent like a stamped plate. Dumb idea.
a law will be passed to make it mandatory..
How is this possible that anything other than government-issues metal license plates is legal to use? How is it possible that an electronic screen prone to damage has been allowed to display license plate data? Is this e-plate clearly visible during nights? Does it work when the car battery runs off? Can it survive minor bumper collisions?
Do I get to determine what the plate reads AND is it legal to do so?
If no ... what is it good for?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
California is basically a socialist state already. The government taxes you, tells you what to do, and now will charge you a hefty fee so you can track your car and so can anyone else. How wonder how many idiot Californian's will buy into this scheme?
Devising a replacement that uses e-ink to display the same information, costs a fortune and offers marginal, highly questionable benefits has to be the dumbest business idea ever. And if I had to track the location of a vehicle for some reason I wouldn't put that device outside the car where it would be subjected to the elements and easily stolen.
In most places in Europe you are not allowed to make your own licence plate. You must use the one the government gave you. Unmodified and with no cover over it or stickers. (Only small mounting holes are legal)
Does it have built in speakers, so I can..
1. Change the plate when the fuzz spot me, and .....
2. Play Smokey and the Bandit,OR duke of Hazzard
as I dash into the sunset?
But in actuality, what I have is an "Rplate," a $700 plate-sized Kindle-like screen on the back of my car -- high-contrast grayscale e-ink and all.
Great, a $700 screen to do something I can do with a $1 piece of stamped metal which won't fall apart the first winter it is exposed to and won't be stolen by some merry pranksters.
The device also contains an RFID and GPS chip that allow me to see where my car is at any given moment, to voluntarily track my trips, and to even optionally display DMV-approved customized messages in a small font below the plate number itself.
I know where my car is because I'm driving it. If it gets stolen I doubt this fancy license plate will help since it would be removed almost immediately. Same with tracking my trips which my smartphone handles more than adequately and can do other things besides. And WhyTF would I want a DMV approved message on my plate? I can already do that with a license plate holder without DMV approval.
Were I an actual paying customer, I'd be paying $7 per month in a service fee, too, mostly to offset the data connection to Verizon. The one-time $700 price tag alone is a bit high for me.
"A bit too high"? That price is obscene for something that solves no obvious problem.
Also, there are still unanswered questions about its security and what it means to voluntarily hand over so much personal location data to a single company.
That's not an unanswered question. They will sell the data to the highest bidder. If you don't know that already you are an idiot.
You mean you're going to pay to have other people track you?
Do you have a smartphone? Then you are already doing that. The real question here is why you would pay someone additional to track you in exchange for no discernible benefit to you.
If they want to track you so bad why not just make them pay?
Ahh now you are on to it. If they want to track you then they can pay you cash money for the privilege. I probably wouldn't do it anyway but at least then it is an idea worth entertaining instead of just rejecting immediately.
Would come up with an idea like this. An extremely overpriced product that provides probably no benefit to the consumer, and has extreme privacy risks. I can't imagine who thought a consumer would want trash like that.
Also, there are still unanswered questions about its security and what it means to voluntarily hand over so much personal location data to a single company.
Well, you don't do your banking on it, your private emails, nor does it track you when you are not actually in the car ... so it beats your phone.
The government already charges me for the "privilege" of tracking my movements with intersection cameras and license plates. Now they are trying out the means to charge more for greater detail on this tracking?
Here's an idea, let's have everyone take off their plates and toss them in the trash. There, done, no more tracking. At least it makes their tracking more expensive because instead of a unique mark placed prominently on the vehicle they will have to track vehicle shape, size, color, and whatever else they can think of to create a unique profile to track.
This bullshit only lasts so long as the people are willing to put up with it. If they keep pushing on the tracking of people with license plates, driver licenses, and the mission creep they've attached to both, then I suspect at some point they might have a bit of civil disobedience on their hands and not much they can do about it to stop it. They can try to make an example of people by confiscating their cars and locking them up but if there is a jury by peers, and enough people fed up with this bullshit, then they will find this as a problem they cannot resolve with just force and intimidation.
I'm thinking it's about time to do away with license plates, not make them more expensive and with greater ability to track the movement of drivers.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The interesting thing about that is most people do this with credit cards.
You're paying massive interest (usually) for a company to track all of your purchases. Of course you get something of value in return (money that isn't yours for a short period of time) but the concept is the same. You're paying out of pocket to have a company harvest and profit off your personal information.
I'm concerned that more people aren't upset over that.
The whole point of a licence plate in to be able to say who this car is registered to so we can track people. A simple medal plate that costs virtually nothing does a great job at that. This is an expensive, environmentally unfriendly solution that is very hackable and defeats the whole purpose of having a reliable record of who the car belongs to. Sure, people could steal license plates and switch them but that often creates a lead for the police. In theory people could even counterfeit their own but I never even heard of that being done. But this would take pwn2own-style hackers probably 10 minutes to break. Everything doesn't need to be digital. Have we gone insane?
No. A thousand times no.
.
On the other hand, paint it white, call it iPlate and let Apple sell it. I'm sure the Apple fanbois will buy them up.
only people that are bad at managing their spending or are idiots pay massive amounts of interest on credit cards. I use my card daily and I pay precisely ZERO interest ever. In fact I make money out of the frequent flyer points and cash back programs. Credit Card companies only make money out of idiots, which sadly there are a lot of out there (or perhaps happily as their idiocy is the reason why those with half a brain can do quite well out of credit cards).
Not just no, but hell no!
My normal license plate also does not contain GPS or RFID which, while it allows you to see where your car is at any given moment, so too does it allow anyone else with a badge or enough money the very same ability. You've read the same stories we all have about the abuses of privacy. How rampant it is and how little those in charge give a shit about violating it. Do you REALLY think they won't do the same with this data ?
On top of this, my current license plate works perfectly after a decade in the sun, snow, rain, hail, mud, rocks and whatever hazards the highways love to kick up.
At most it might get a dent or two but it won't cost me more $$$ to get it replaced when it fails.
Nope. Nope and more Nope.
You are an idiot, congratulations!
That is nearly ten years worth of auto registration fees here. Why the hell would I pay that annually? Even in socialist California that would've been two years worth 30 years ago when I lived out there. Why would I pay an additional monthly fee on top of that? This whole idea is plain stupid. If they gave it away for the same fee I pay now I wouldn't want it. Why install a government tracking device in my car?
I think the worst part of this is letting Ajit Pai's brethren know where you are at all times... be very afraid.
No.
The purpose of this device is to make it easier for the phone company and the police to keep track of you so the data can be sold to advertisers, or worse. They should pay you $700 to let them put it on your car.
Is the government wants to know if you would pay $700 for an electric e-ink plate. That would allow them to track your vehicle for per mile taxing, and disable your license plate if your car is:
a) stolen (plate changes to the word STOLEN), useful for the first year until thieves simply start using their own plates.
b) EXPIRED - yup, if your inspection, emissions or registration expire, that is what your plate will read so cops pull you over quickly.
c) Behind on your taxes? Likely display a similar alert.
d) Insurance? Cause how long until the state wants the insurance company to send status alerts to them and your plated changes to UNINSURED. Pulled over again, even though your payment went thru - the system just didn't get updated over the 3-day weekend.
e) Benefit? You paid $700 for about a $100 of technology. Basically a Kindle + GPS marker. What other benefit is there for you? NONE...
This all benefits the state....
Wow. This offer is nearly as attractive as the spy devices that Amazon and Google are selling people to put in their houses and order pizza for them. Now, for only $700 (plus a small monthly fee) you can make your vehicle immediately visible and tracked by the government or anyone else who really wants to. These people are taking away our last shreds of privacy, and many of us are dumb enough to pay for it.
this has got to be targeted at companies with fleets: rental cars, delivery services, trucking lines, etc
It needs a better name. Licensero. Licenseranos. Hmmm...
I would pay it only as an excuse to show off how much money I had, that the $700 cost was insignificant to me. In essence a digital license plate would be an asshole alert. Expect to see many of them on Corvettes driven by gray-haired old men.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Obviously these will become mandatory sooner or later. This pilot program is likely not a direct prelude to that, just an attempt at fact-finding. The plates will also be V2V beacons which assist the network of autonomous vehicles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No only no, but hell no! But, eventually, this will "catch on" and city, county, state, & federal governments will see it as another "mandate" for OUR benefit. More intrusion, monitoring, tickets and what not.
Those displays can be ordered in bulk from Alibaba for as low as $30 a piece, add on a $5 GPS and $10 cellular data modem, toss it all in some plastic and you're paying $700 for a $50 device. The audacity that they would charge you $7 a month for something they are going to use to display ads to others is unacceptable.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
These plates will fall victim to those obnoxious shitbags who smash their way into parallel parking spots, ramrodding back-and-forth until they fit, using the other cars' bumpers as a guide.
Who pays for replacement of damaged plates? Plain old steel plates don't last long on my truck. I imagine that a flimsy e-ink display will be destroyed in short order.
Have gnu, will travel.
California is one of the states which require TWO plates on cars. So you need a front plate which probably doubles your price, and will get damaged in no time (take a look at the state of front plates in a parking lot sometime).
Also, make sure you don't travel to SoCal or AZ or anywhere sunny and hot. This piece of plastic and electronics will have to withstand higher than military spec temperature range since it is exposed ON THE OUTSIDE of a metal sheet heated directly by the hot sun.
One thing something like this could solve is tying a number plate to an actual driver rather than the car. And that could be a good thing.
So you want to loan your brother in law the car, but he notoriously goes through tolls, gets parking tickets, and doesn't pay you back when the bills come? Well this could solve this. He gets in, the plate switches to one tied to him, and now all the bills go to him.
Or you live in a place like Ohio and your SO gets a DUI. Instead of you having to deal with the scorn of a Party Plate, you have a nice clean plate when you drive while your SO gets to wear the scarlet letters.
Or it could be very useful in a car sharing, personal car rental scenario.
There are some good uses for this down the road, but can't see any right now. The "Stolen" message could be done with a license plate holder with a small E-Ink screen across the top or bottom. No need to replace the whole plate for that. And there are plenty of other devices that will happily track you via GPS for a lot less than $700.
No. And the state has zero business emotionally manipulating people by trying to turn this into a status indicator by virtue of exclusivity or association to get anyone to buy it. And it's not about the cost, although the immorality of yet another private corporation using a government fee as its revenue stream is beyond old at this point.
Companies need to fuck right off with monthly fees. $700 is pretty fuckin' nuts for a license, but as a one-time purchase, whatever. But tacking monthly fees onto that? I hope the people that came up with the idea live a life of eternal debt and monthly fee hell.
If you think people would be stupid to pay $700 for a license that can track their travels but you bought a smart speaker, you need to look in the mirror.
What pains me is the direction this is all heading into. The more people keep losing sight of the value of privacy, the easier it will be for governments to make these things mandatory. After all, who cares if 1% of the voters still care about their privacy?
#DeleteFacebook
n/t
The main advantage of such a device is that it should show the license number of the person driving, not the registration number of the vehicle. That could easily be done with a license reader inside the car, even rfid.
Get this product made well enough ,then convince some state legislatures to mandate their use. Think about even if you were only making $2 on a sale and .50 a month on the upkeep. What kind of money is that across the population of say California or new York. After the product is adopted.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Not only would I not pay for it, I would fight tooth and nail against it if they required it, even to the point of being jailed over it. Severe privacy violation, literally having a realtime GPS tracking device bolted to your vehicle. Fuck that sideways with a rusty chainsaw, not enough HELL, NO! in the Multiverse for this.
What problem is this solving?
If you buy a Jaguar you get the same gps tracking features, remote climate control, remote locking, remote start and other goodies all for free. $0 cellular service cost.
Seriously: Why on Earth would I do such a super pointless thing that can only have negative consequences?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This'll be popular with Tesla owners.
Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha hahahahahah
(Slowly zoom in on my mouth)
Hahahahahah hahahahahah hahahahahah
(My laughter is now slowed down in a lower pitch)
Hahahahaha hahahahahah hahahahaha
No
Would not this be car thieves dream? If the Ca DMV approves these types of plates, what to stop a car thief or other criminal from creating a fictitious plate when ever he wanted, from the comfort of his car. If you had hacked a db with stored playe numbers, or created your own, you could just simply reprogram the plate sized tablet on your car whenever you needed a fictitious plate number.
Of course, I am sure they have thought of a foolproof way to prevent this from happening.
I came to look for a post mentioning the DEC logo, and it turns out to be the frist one. Congrats and good job!
What real benefit do YOU receive in exchange for the $700 + $7/Month ?
It seems overpriced. In exchange for letting them track you, the plate should be Free, also: the company should provide some other benefit to you in order to justify you doing this.
Why does a license plate need to be dynamically changed? I bet it's not even legal in most jurisdictions to register more than one license plate to a vehicle (so you could envision wanting to legally change it every other day).
The only problem I see it solving is illegally impersonating someone else as you drive, say you want to run a red light camera, or avoiding an amber alert.
This is not dates April First. Is it months early, or months late?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Absolutely not, no way.
That's incredibly expensive. Just another way to get tracked and hacked. Absolutely not. Plus, we need to simplify our lives, not make them even more complicated.