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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.
I would get one of these, if it let switch between other license plates that weren't registered in my name.
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.
Some bumper stickers are useful. I had one saying "Authorized Vehicle." It let me make U-turns on the highway.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law