There’s a lady in my apartment building whose license plate says EET CAKE. Every time I see it, I smile — who wouldn’t? But I got to thinking about why she’d chosen it. I’d always associated vanity plates with a certain type of person; you know, the kind that gets I LV DSNY for their sweet 16.

In this case, there was a deeper meaning, explains EET CAKE owner Dale Webdale, a San Francisco-based retired software engineer. She’s owned the plates since 1980 and says they serve as a reminder of the folly of gentrification (after all, “let them eat cake,” was Marie Antoinette’s infamous response upon hearing her starving subjects lacked bread). This is painfully relevant in the Bay Area, a region with huge income disparities.

I started noticing more and more vanity plates in the wild — in the Bay Area, I’ve spotted SELF DRVN and HTTPS — and I got curious. Vanities act as a kind of IRL information superhighway, simultaneously trivial and telling. They’re essentially Twitter handles on the back bumper, but they predate social media by decades.

The emergence of license plates dates back to 1901, when New York governor Benjamin Odell Jr. passed a bill requiring auto owners to register with the state. Fast forward to 2019, with an estimated 281million registered cars in America driving an average of 13,000 miles a year. Around 5% of those cars have vanity plates, based on data pulled from multiple DMVs, research reports, and FOIAs. Rules about what’s permitted on a vanity vary state by state, but most adhere to no sex, no drugs, and no hate speech guidelines. In California, the DMV values “good taste and decency,” says spokesperson Artemia Armento. But that doesn’t stop people from trying to sneak things by.

“We get a lot of requests to have 69 on it,” Armento admits. To prevent this, the DMV proactively warns applicants that no configuration whatsoever that includes the number 69 is allowed, barring proof that your car was issued that year.

The filter hasn’t deterred people from getting custom plates, of course: As of December 2018, California had 1,155,528 vanities in the wild.

But the era of vanity license plates may be on its way out. In 2018, California started trialing digital license plates — essentially, a connected, iPad-like screen that’s capable of remotely updating your tax stickers and displaying STOLEN if your car is filched. These plates have been approved for use in Arizona and Texas, and a number of states have pending legislation. Electronic plates are positioned as the future of license plates, a technological leap on the back of a bumper. You can personalize them in the same way as a regular plate, Armenta says, but many vanity plate holders are unconvinced.

“People are devastated about [the emergence of] digital license plates.” He views them as heralding the end of an era.

“American license plates are like colorful picture postcards that create a unique identity for each state,” says Rogelio Flores, a card-carrying member of ALPCA, the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association. “People are devastated about [the emergence of] digital license plates.”

He views them as heralding the end of an era. “To the new generation, they only know digital,” he says. “To them, this is nothing more than some old metal thing.”

Neville Boston, CEO of Reviver, the company that manufactures the majority of digital license plates in the world, disagrees. We meet at Reviver’s head office in Foster City, a wealthy Bay Area suburb famous for housing Elon Musk and having more parks per capita than any other city in California. His office is on the ground floor of an office park high-rise, adjacent to San Francisco Bay. I don’t see a single pedestrian en route. I’m early for our meeting and his receptionist ushers me into a waiting area labeled “the Dungeon,” possibly because it lacks windows. Then I’m shown into his office, a bright, airy space with red walls and a floor to ceiling view of the car park. A framed New York Times story about Reviver is mounted behind his head.

“It’s always nice to have technology that you can actually derive a benefit from,” he says, pointing out that a digital vanity plate can signify far more than a traditional plate, fixed in time. “We didn’t change this to a QR code. It’s still a license plate. But they’re not frozen like a regular plate. And you can change the subhead through our app!”

“When I first got it, I had this slight regret, but 15 minutes later someone honks at me and says your plate is cool, and I didn’t regret it anymore.”

Boston never planned to enter the auto world. He started out in marketing, but his business model blew up in the 2008 recession. Looking for something new, he wound up in a conversation about bad DMV experiences with a friend (there are many of these on Reddit) and was inspired to found a digital license plate startup. This area was ripe for innovation, he explains. There’s been nothing new in years. Investors agreed, to the tune of $25.5 million in a Series A. “This can revolutionize how people operate,” Boston says. “With regular plates, you’re hampered by the fact that it’s metal. With digital plates, the beauty of it is that compliance becomes something different.”

The endpoint and starting point are both in Reviver’s app. This is where users can update their registration without needing to visit the DMV in person. Other benefits include GPS tracking and Bluetooth connectivity, which is how the slogan beneath the numbers on the plates updates. Owners select from a number of preset messages and update with a tap. Boston’s plate reads “I’d rather be running,” whereas a regular Californian plate would likely display “dmv.gov.ca.”

So far, Reviver’s released two models of their RPlates — the Rplate Essential, and the Rplate Pro, at $349 and $499, respectively, with a $2.99 and $6.99 monthly charge. The main difference is trip tracking and location alerts, which let you know when the car reaches its destination–good for making sure your kid sister hasn’t gone on a Vegas rager.

These seem expensive, but their pricing model is still in flux — Reviver is trying different approaches. In 2018 they topped out at $699, and in January 2019 they were $499 and $799.

“I don’t see it as expensive,” Boston says. “Expensive compared to what? The flip phone was very inexpensive. When you got to a smartphone, it got more expensive, because of all the features. It’s what you pay for the platform you’re enabling.”

I see the real hero function of the Rplate, the one that’s touted in every story and press release, as the ability to remotely update their display to read “STOLEN.” More than 770,000 American vehicles are swiped each year — with a recovery rate of approximately 59%. The likelihood a stolen car will be found drops with every hour. Changing the display might boost those odds, but so far it’s 100% theoretical.

To go from stolen car to STOLEN on your tag is a process, Boston says. It’s never actually been done before, but it would go like this: You’d file a police report, then notify Reviver, then they’d attempt to verify the claim, and then — and only then — they’d push the “STOLEN” status out. It’s not an instant process, likely taking 16-plus hours, Boston says. “Those are the things that we’re kind of working out,” he explains.

These kinks haven’t stopped people from purchasing them. In Los Angeles, 26-year-old Kevin Salazar bought one and personalized his new plate with FOAMER 2 — a reference to his passion for trainspotting. “I’ve liked trains ever since I was a little boy,” he says. “Foamer has many meanings in railroads, but everyone agrees it’s a rail fan who goes over the top.”

Salazar first saw the Rplate in 2018, when his wife texted him a picture of one on a Tesla. “I was like, WTF is that?” he says. “Before she sent anything else, I responded that I wanted it. But she said it cost about $1000 — and I was like, aww, I can’t afford that!” But he was primed when his tax return arrived. Every year, he likes to spend a little on something exciting, normally a family vacation, but this time around, his wife didn’t feel like traveling and gave him the go-ahead to buy the plate. “It was different and cool,” he says. “It saves me having to go to the DMV for registration. And the monthly charges (will) track my car if it’s stolen.”

He paid $995 for the plate, including tax and a $200 installation fee (because his car is older), plus a $6 monthly fee. But it’s worth it, he says.

“When I first got it, I had this slight regret, but 15 minutes later someone honks at me and says your plate is cool, and I didn’t regret it anymore.” He does worry about the safety of his plate–that’s a lot of value to have on your bumper–but says he’s more concerned about getting rear-ended and cracking it than theft.

“Location and tracking data is one big bucket of privacy issues.”

Some people are considering a different kind of safety concern with these plates. Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says there’s a possibility they could be hacked. “From a security perspective, if it’s connected, there’s a way in,” he says. “You may mean for the app and system to only have access to the display on the perimeter, but what’s played out in hacks is that often non-obtrusive systems are used to access the main part of the car and affect how it behaves.”

And Reviver’s public privacy policy raises some red flags. In it, they state they’ll disclose data to third parties to comply with legal obligations and that they’ll “allow third parties to place and read their own cookies, to collect information.” Nonetheless, Tien gives props to Reviver for being public about their privacy infringements.

“In the old days, they might not have said anything at all,” he says. “But people are more sensitive now to privacy issues and companies are more likely to get ahead of it.” That doesn’t mean he approves of their terms.

“We cannot ensure that parties who have access to such information will respect your privacy,” Reviver’s policy states in reference to their interactive features. “Please exercise caution.”

Access to location-based data such as where you shop, study, and play, gives marketers or the authorities a comprehensive insight into who people are. This can potentially lead to stereotyping, discrimination, and in terms of immigrants, possible deportation. “Location and tracking data is one big bucket of privacy issues,” Tien says, noting problems around facial recognition technology and automated license plate readers. “That’s a tremendous amount of sensitive information.”

The future functionality of the plate could also be problematic. While the Rplates currently have no advertising or vendors, both Boston and Reviver’s policies suggest this is something in their pipeline. On the positive side, that might mean automated tolling or the plate doubling as a Fastrak pass. “But with monetizing comes a greater privacy risk,” Tien says — data will likely be retained for longer, and he worries about how that will be used.

For the time being, this is still a discussion, not a decision — and it’s not deterring competitors from sprouting up, either. Reviver was the only company to bid on the California pilot, but there are others throughout the United States. Competitors include International Proof systems in St. Louis, and Compliance Innovations in South Carolina, headed by a former DMV employee. Compliance Innovations plan to digitize just a portion of the plate, likely the tax numbers or disability stickers, as a way to crack down on cheats.

In Alabama, digital plate startup Vizrom is run by Nigerian immigrant Emmanuel Umoh. He says his plate will be $300 with a $2 monthly charge for a Verizon connection. Services offered are similar to the Rplate; telematics, personalization, real-time driving data, etc. Umoh complains that his progress has been stifled by Alabama’s laws. “Alabama is slow to embrace changes,” he says; he’s petitioning legislators to allow pilots of his plate.

To be sure, only 1,600-odd digital plates are on California highways, and even with Boston’s goal of 10,000 by Christmas, that’s still only 0.003% of all cars on the roads. There’s time to figure out how this works, and how to make it work well. Boston’s confident he’ll get there. “We’re solving real-world problems,” he says. “There’s a community aspect to it, because if there’s an Amber Alert or Silver Alert, you’re letting the community around you know that something’s happening and asking them to engage.”