If you’ve been patiently waiting for your chance to buy a digital license plate for your car … you clearly have too much money. This week, California approved a digital license plate for use on all vehicles. So what does it do?
The features for this relatively pointless innovation include a combination of everything you can already do on your phone (renew your registration without going to the DMV!) and features that most electric cars already have (remind yourself where you parked!). The digital plate can also turn from dark to light, display a custom banner message, broadcast that your car is stolen and allow you to track the thieves location (unless they happen to remove the license plate!).
The problem is, this license plate doesn’t do any of the things that drivers would actually want from a digital plate. Like changing my plate number to a random number when I’m going through a zone that has photo speed cameras. Or letting me broadcast an angry message to the asshole driving too close behind me. Or letting me use a really cool photo or piece of digital art as the background to personalize my look. I mean, if you’re going to create a frivolous way for me to waste my money, at least make it fun.
