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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.
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...
$500 fine here if you don't have the sticker on the plate. Doesn't matter if you have it with you, once the expiry date passes, you better hope for a nice cop who lets you put it on right then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Suppose you manage a large vehicle fleet, like UPS, FedEx or a large trucking company. Having something like this would be very handy
I can certainly see how a large fleet could use electronic tags to fraudulently avoid a lot of vehicle tax, but for genuine tracking needs, the Telematics boxes they already use are probably a lot more cost effective. Its been a few years since I checked the specific details, but low bandwidth data plans in bulk for IoT and Telematics usage can be had for less per year than this is charging per month.
No point for truck companies, they're all hooked up and satellite or cell linked. They all must have e-logbooking as well at least here in North America, been like that mandated as law since early this year(was mandated and all companies given 2 years to come into compliance). The DMV can pull it right from the transponder on the truck and know every road, side-road, and rest area you've hit. The big truck companies have for over a decade known exactly where their vehicles and trailers are at all times, it's one of the reasons why trailer and tanker theft is so low now. On top of that it hold no value to a trucking company or delivery company in terms of say toll roads, since you have to use a transponder. You can get one from a universal billing company for $10-15/mo that works in every state, every toll road/bridge in north america.
As for your question on plates? No point. Fleet vehicles use fleet plates, no sticker required on those. The permit tag goes on the drivers side of the truck, if it's fleet owned they put a new one on when it goes in for maintenance. If it's privately owned? You hit your local DMV office's website, and they send it in the mail, you print off a copy for your truck and wait for it. Or just input the new code into your elogbook and all the certification work is done just like that.
Om, nomnomnom...
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....