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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. . . .
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?
Except the makers of this aren't the government, goober.
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.
Too late - I already have PlateCoin locked up...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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
The best reason I can come up with would be swapping out plates but other that criminals, not sure who needs or wants that ability. Possibly some sort of car dealer or interstate truck.
Another possible reason might be to have the ability to turn off your plate while parked but not even sure if that is legal.
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.
A more useful trick would be to use a bit of machine vision to detect what color the traffic light is and then turn it off if the intersection is listed in a red light camera database....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"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.
Not even if the plate read "California needs Lex Luthor's nuclear missle!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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...
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.
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.
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...
That internet connection is going to be great in High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas.
A GUI map of every car that stops, parks, meets up in real time.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...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.
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?
That's a stupid retort. The whole thing is premised on a shit governmental system.
You're premised on a governmental system, goober
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.
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.
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 $700). This is nonsense.
Yeah! Not only is it ridiculously expensive, but now the authorities can presumably turn your license plate into a flashing orange beacon at their whim. Good thinking! *facepalm*
Clickety Click
I always ask my self if the price on gadgets will improve my quality of life more than the amount of work it took to earn that money.
I can't possibly see how 700$ + 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
A more useful trick would be to use a bit of machine vision to detect what color the traffic light is and then turn it off if the intersection is listed in a red light camera database....
What, so you can jump the light without getting caught by anything but the car that t bones you?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
What's changed since '75 ?
Immigration.
You think immigration is the only think to have changed since 1975? I'm not even sure that's true. Has immigration changed since 1975? I can't be bothered to find out. But the fact that you jump to that idea says a lot about you.
Don't let fear control you. Look for ways you can make positive changes in your life to bring you more happiness or satisfaction. There have been and always will be immigrants. They are not your problem. Even if we closed all the borders and didn't let anyone in, your life would be largely the same. That's because your problem is your own mentality and outlook. But that's good news! You can change your outlook and see things differently if you choose to. You can't really do much about immigrants, except bitch about them on the Internet. So focus on yourself and what you are thinking and feeling. Any change in your life starts with you.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.
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!
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.
That's what I was going to say!
Well you can't forget that since 1975 infant mortality is down, the life expectancy is up, and although the birth rate has dropped we are still talking about over 3 million up to 4.5 million a year for the past 43 years.
By the way a complete idiot would be caught and deported so maybe they aren't doctors and lawyers but don't believe they are dumb. Imagine an illegal immigrant first has to get past boarder control and then avoid immigration and any law enforcement because if they are caught or arrested for anything they will be deported. They have no ID, no drivers license, no social security number are unable to work a legitimate job but somehow they are here for years with out so much as a speeding ticket.
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
Hrmm, where to start? The font for most number plates is FE-Schrift - it's considered harder to change the number by applying some black tape to a 3 to turn it into a B for instance. Even if the font was readily available (not sure, did not check but I imagine it is) I would not trust the average person to even know about it or trust them to use it instead of some fucked up font like Calibri because "it looks nicer". There are also regulations on size and shape etc. which make it easier to read the number plate, not to mention the reflective layers built into most number plates to make them more visible in the dark, it's going to take a funky printer to do that. Then lets take a look at the medium most printers use - paper. It won't take long (about a year) before the paper starts showing sun damage - do you trust that EVERYONE will print out a new one to replace the fading one stuck to their wind screen? I sure as fuck don't. Then there is location, most number plate readers are trained to only OCR parts of the image to speed things up, if people can willy nilly stick a piece of arbitrary paper somewhere on their window (which one?) you would have to have at least 3 cameras on a vehicle to be able to identify it, doing full OCR on the entire car. We are busy rolling out License Plate Recognition to a large company, the lazy fucks don't want to wind down their window and use their RFID to open the parking boom, they want the boom to automatically open as they approach. We get so much garbage from the readers we had to do fuzzy matching. What I want is standard number plates - no vanity plates - and a fucking check digit so I can determine if what I am getting from the reader is garbage or not. What about vehicles with company logo's, or bumper stickers? Without being able to train the camera to only look in one place for a valid license plate all of that shit is going to end up in the database.
Then there is the hit and run issue, where I live you are not allowed to attach the number plate to your vehicle with bolts (pop rivets etc) that happens to the plastic license plate holder, and your plate clips into that. If you hit someone chances are your number plate will pop off, so if you drive off afterwards they can still track you down. How is a piece of paper stuck somewhere going to help with that?
Plates might be a bit dated, but suggesting sticking a piece of paper to your window as a valid replacement is retarded.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Imagine an illegal immigrant first has to get past boarder control
It is a popular myth that most undocumented immigrants cross the boarder illegally. Visa overstays have been the majority since 2007. Also, 60% of undocumented immigrants have been here for more than a decade. 40% came here by air. Think about this when you hear chants about building a wall.
It is not difficult to cross the southern border. Now that a Hugo Chavez clone has been elected Pres of Mexico it is now more important than ever to secure that border.
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.
See also:
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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
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.
You tards think if you take the "wasted" money from the blacks and the browns, Uncle Sam the Whitiest is gonna send you a check for the difference? Never has, never will.
And yeah, dumbass, we do hand out free money. We just gave several billion to a bunch of billionaires who didn't want it. I have no idea why you guys are their lapdogs. They don't even throw you a piece of beef jerky from time to time but you still lick those boots.
Population increases, sum of IQ remains constant. I forgot who said it first...
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
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.