Digital license plates changing the way traditional plates are used

By Lauren Kummer

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    GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan (WXMI) — Your yearly Secretary of State visit could soon be a thing of the past when it comes to license plates.

A new digital plate allows the user to do everything on their phone — from registration, to sharing amber alerts and even reporting the vehicle as stolen.

“Think about it, like you had a flip phone, and now you have a smartphone. You had a metal plate, now you have a smart plate,” said Neville Boston, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Reviver.

Michigan is one of the first states to legalize them for road use.

“We have made the world’s first digital license plate platform,” said Boston.

Reviver is aiming to modernize the driving experience.

The company, has been around for a decade, but started putting digital plates on the road in 2018.

“Michigan was the first state that we were legal to launch in, so we’ve got a particularly really good relationship with Michigan,” said Boston.

Now, in the addition to our state, Arizona, California and Texas have also legalized those plates for commercial use.

“You got to think about a vehicle. Everything on a vehicle, the smart. The windows are smart, and even the tires, so why would you have a static plate? The plate is now smart,” said Boston.

A spokeswoman with the Michigan Secretary of State says “Public Act 656 of 2018 authorizes use of digital plates in Michigan”. They released a statement regarding the digital license plates.

“Your digital plate will have the same background as your state-issued plate, but the graphics will be in greyscale rather than full color. At this time, the only vendor approved to sell digital plates in Michigan is Reviver.”

Like a lot of technology, you can control the digital plate from your smartphone through an app. For example if your car was stolen, you can change the plate to stay ‘stolen’ and even track it.

“Think about it like this, what if there was inclement weather in a particular area? That’s information that you could push up, whatever there was an Amber Alert, or a Silver Alert, all of those things. Now you can look at differently because you have technology that will communicate in a different way,” said Boston.

Right now, you can purchase the plates directly from Reviver or from certain dealerships.

Reviver said they sell the plates on monthly subscription rates over several year contracts. It comes out to about $20 to $25 a month.

The company said there are currently less than 1,000 plates in Michigan so far.

“We’d love to be you know, on the cutting edge and and we really, really enjoy seeing how this could grow and become mainstream with everything that we do,” said Boston.

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