E Paper License Plates Now Street-Legal in California

E Paper License Plates Now Street-Legal in California

Update 14 Oct. 2022: The “Kindle” of license plates—Reviver’s linked, digital RPlate—is now authorized for use by any California car or truck-owner, subsequent a 10,000-car or truck pilot that commenced in 2018. The California Motor Automobile Digital Quantity Plates monthly bill that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed this month authorizes digital replacements for traditional license plates, stickers, tabs, and registration playing cards, like the very first-to-industry Reviver products.

Outside the house of California, the device has been permitted for use by business fleet automobiles in Michigan, Arizona, and Texas, and 10 added U.S. states are considering authorization.

The battery-operated RPlate for buyers at this time sells as a subscription services for $19.95 for each month for 48 months a hard-wired model for business vehicles sells for $24.95 per thirty day period.

In the story down below (initially posted 18 June 2018), we describe the RPlate and its prospective works by using most of these details—other than the pricing structure—haven’t adjusted.

That license plate frame sporting a dealership identify, sports crew brand, or your preferred superhero? Which is so past year.

This yr, vehicle sellers in California will be able to go over and above personalized license plate frames to market “Kindle-ized” license plates, in which the total plate can show custom made textual content and graphics working with e-paper technology. These displays can be up to date remotely, with such updates changing the tiny date stickers that have to be reapplied each and every year when registration is renewed.

And, when the car is stopped, drivers will also be ready to minimize the license variety to a tiny window and use the relaxation of the monitor for a distinctive graphic. (Though I’m not sure the people stopped guiding a custom-plate-bearing vehicle will notice so numerous persons consider that option to surreptitiously look at their cellular telephones.)

Reviver Car is making the so-known as Rplates, and they are not cheap—the plates are stated at US $700, plus an $8 a month subscription price. [See updated pricing above. –Ed.] The corporation is at first concentrated on marketing and advertising them to fleet supervisors, who are envisioned to use the displays for marketing messages, but expects early adopters to swiftly bounce on the technological know-how, and other shoppers to arrive on board as the organization proves out the plates’ usefulness.

The task commenced in 2008, Reviver founder and CEO Neville Boston says, with a strategy to do away with those date stickers—it was time, he imagined, to get registration renewals out of snail mail and into the wi-fi earth. In the midst of an economic downturn, he says, he was also searching to get involved with anything that exists in very good instances and bad—and the DMV is unquestionably that.

Then, he says, he began contemplating about what else e-paper plates could do. His list of alternatives includes:

  • Having to pay for tolls and parking
  • Determining cars and trucks as authorized for vacation in superior-occupancy car lanes
  • Replacing particular hangtags and license plates for people with disabilities
  • Supporting an Uber driver uncover a passenger by displaying the passenger’s name
  • Indicating that a automobile is in autonomous mode
  • Exhibiting a QR code that could operate with an app for keyless entry
  • Celebrating holidays with greetings, like “Happy Father’s Day”
  • Switching amongst various distinctive curiosity plates motorists will not have to dedicate to supporting, say, Lake Tahoe, at the price of Yosemite or the California coastline

Not a poor listing. But as soon as these changeable plates are out in the wild, it appears to be like it’ll be just times ahead of somebody builds an app to shoot them messages like “Back off, tailgater!”—or perhaps exhibit the driver’s Twitter feed.

Boston claims he’s imagined of that—any information will have to be approved by the DMV prior to it is included to the library, and only messages from that library may possibly go to the plate.

A person of the earliest adopters will be the city of Sacramento metropolis supervisors are purchasing the plates for new metropolis-owned cars and assume to use the plates to show public service announcements and Amber Alerts.

License plate identifying the car as stolen.
Photograph: Reviver Automobile

These plates are also trackable—another boon to fleet proprietors, and possibly to mothers and fathers of teenagers—but that function raises obvious privacy concerns, nevertheless Reviver features a host of assurances about its cybersecurity procedures. If these worries are resolved, trackability could be a helpful way to thwart intruders: A stolen auto could show its personal SOS message.

California was the initially state to formally approve the digital plates Arizona could be subsequent, as it is conducting a pilot take a look at of the know-how. Boston reported three more U.S. states will introduce the gadgets this calendar year, and his firm is “in conversation” with 10 more.

Reviver has also signed a proof-of-concept arrangement with the governing administration of Dubai, who, Boston says, is wondering about the plates a tiny otherwise than DMV officials in the United States. “They want to know who is driving all around in their state,” he states.

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