Once advertisers come on board, drivers could get a rebate, either through fees paid to them for agreeing to let their plate promote products, or through discounts for those products.
Reviver will start testing its RPlate in Arizona in August and in Maryland, Nevada and Pennsylvania later this year; by next year, it expects to expand its pilot programs to Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan and Washington. The company is also planning a test in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where drivers will be able to use the plate to alert other drivers to road conditions.
But it’s not the only company looking to digitize license plates.
International Proof Systems, a St. Louis start-up, is developing a standard metal plate with an embedded chip that can change color to signify registration status, whether the vehicle has been stolen or any other designation the authorities require. The company has applied for permission to test its design in Delaware and New York.
Compliance Innovations is proposing to digitize only a section of a standard license plate with a 2¾-by-4-inch screen that uses E Ink technology to display letters or codes indicating if the vehicle is stolen, uninsured, not registered or eligible for handicapped parking. The company, a start-up in South Carolina, is testing its plate privately there and in Pennsylvania and Texas.
Compliance Innovations believes that by allowing the police to easily see if a vehicle is not registered or insured, the rate of noncompliance will drop, lowering insurance premiums while increasing states’ registration revenues.
Because most of the plate would remain standard, the digital version could be sold for less than $100, plus a monthly communications fee, said Dick Butcher, the company’s chief financial officer.
Mr. Butcher said there was another benefit. By replacing only a portion of the plate with a black-and-white screen, he said, “we let states keep their colorful designs.”
