California allows digital licence plates, with US$1,100 price tag

SAN FRANCISCO: California’s roads just got a little smarter with the passage of a bill that paves the way for the sale of digital licence plates across the state.

The technology allows for emergency messaging like marking the car stolen or indicating an Amber Alert, and can be personalised through an app with touts like “Go Warriors” or “Go Lakers” to cheer on the local sports teams.

The pesky task of car registration also will become easier with DMV auto-renewals, eliminating the need for registration cards and stickers.

California-based startup Reviver is the only company offering digital licence plates right now, and they’re expensive, costing up to US$1,100 (RM5,161) for four years for a hard-wired version. (The cost for a traditional licence plate, registration card and sticker totals US$69, according to state’s DMV.)

A battery-powered version is available for around US$20 per month subscription, or US$215 a year, for four years.


The devices have raised privacy concerns because of the sensitive data they can aggregate, which could have the potential to be hacked and tracked.

Organisations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights group, have been fighting for years to restrict police from using automated licence plate readers to surveil neighbourhoods for location data that can detect travel patterns of targeted vehicles.

But that’s not stopping the charge forward.

In 2016, Reviver began testing the devices in California and has since began selling in Arizona and Michigan, where digital licence plates are already approved. The company also has plans to expand into Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Texas as more states adopt the technology.