Beats the old days of James Bond with the rolling license plates.
I agree, there's no reason for a civilian to have this.
Reading some of the article, it sounds like it's for city / government fleets.
And, of course, for advertising. Now every car can be a tiny billboard.
And now, we've gone from cheap durable metal plates made by prisoners (do they still do that?), to computerized, fragile, possibly hackable license plates, probably built on the other side of the planet.
Shit, just stick an android tablet to the back of the car and call it a day. There. I just saved the government like 3 trizillion dollars.
Other concerns:
My battery in my license plate thingy died so now I can't drive without being pulled over.
My screen is cracked on my license plate thingy and now this piece of electronics is dead and I need a new one.
Someone stole my car. So I triggered the "STOLEN" verbiage on my license plate thingy, which is lying in my driveway where my car used to be.
There's an emergency. And everyone has these plates. So now thousands of plates all switch to display the exact same emergency info.
I paid $100 to have my new license plate thingy installed. Good thing these new license plate thingies aren't for poor people.
I was watching an ad on my neighbor's new license plate thingy. Then he backed up and killed me.
My license plate thingy isn't working. So I asked the girl at Secretary of State / DMV for tech support. She quit on the spot.
My license plate thingy isn't working. So I called for tech support. I'm #17 in line.
My license plate thingy is overheating in the sun when I use it to mine bitcoins or perform DDoS attacks.
Someone hacked the license plate thingy system and now every license plate just says PENIS.
Those are a few of my concerns.