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Digital License Plates Approved for All Vehicles in California, Subscription Required

California has become the first state in the U.S., as well the first place in the world, where digital license plates are legal. The process was started nine years ago, back in 2013, and a limited number of vehicles have been tested with digital plates since 2018. But now, all 40 million vehicles will be allowed to get one.
Reviver’s suite of products now available in California for all vehicle owners 7 photos
Photo: Reviver
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As you can imagine, the new digital plates will be a novelty item for many people, who will order a replacement set for their conventional ones as soon as they can. Others might get them just to stay on trend, while many might just ignore digital license plates altogether.

According to Reviver, the firm that makes the RPlate, their product allows vehicle owners to ahieve a new degree of visual personalization, as well as vehicle location services and security services. For example, a person could use a digital license plate on their car to report it stolen, and the plate would change its display to show its new status.

Customers will have to choose between a battery-powered digital license plate that comes with a $19.95 a month subscription fee, or with a hardwired one that costs $24.95 per month. For the moment, the latter is only available to commercial businesses, but it may be offered to the public later.

It is important to note that other states in the U.S., such as Arizona, Texas, and Michigan, allow commercial fleet vehicles to use digital license plates. More than ten U.S. states are in various stages of the adoption process of this new license plate system.

It is tempting to fleet operators, as it does come with a software dashboard system that helps monitor the fleet, automate the registration process – along with its monthly fee payments, and offers the possibility of batch registration renewals, telematics, mileage tracking, and even geofencing. Some of those can be done with a GPS-linked alarm or other fleet monitoring systems, mind you.

The idea is that the new license plates work with e-ink, so running out of batteries will not lead to having the display go blank if their batteries die.

While the solution does bring a few possibilities to the table, it also brings new problems that might arise, such as hackers cracking these to make it look like a vehicle is stolen, just to put its driver in danger.

The people of the Internet are also wondering what happens if a subscriber forgets to pay their monthly digital subscription for their license plate. That is an interesting question, if you ask us.

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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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