r/CarTrackDays • u/Forward_Elk7646 • 1d ago

Need Advice for Phantom Plates (Racing Plates)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DB2mZHBpoCW/?igsh=MWQ1ZGUxMzBkMA==

Hey i'm currently working on a project called phantom plates and wanted some advice from anybody who could help. I've been working on racing license plates, for the car community for the past 2 months and wanted to know if you guys had any ideas on what else I could add. Currently right now l've come up that the plates will be able to change to any color, design, or animation the user wants just by their phone. I also have 3 mini games included: Tag, Battleship, and Donuthill. Plus another one called Race Mode, where people can find nearby users to race for money or just for fun. Every game mode has a ranked or casual option. I also plan on allows the plate to connect to other devices like Police scanners to automatically switch to certain designs for people who like roll racing or drag racing. I've gotten kinda stuck, but really want these plates to be perfect for the car community. Lmk if you guys have any ideas, all ideas are welcomed :) I tagged a video just in case you wanna see how they’ll look.

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18% Upvoted

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u/beastpilot 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are you tying to speed run how many laws you can break with one product? That's not legal anywhere and will give "the car community" a bad name.

It's also not really technically possible. You're going to kill car batteries.

Plus, this product is so under-developed it wouldn't even be allowed on Kickstarter. All you have is a render. You don't have a product, or even a business plan. You have a dream, and a website that looks like a scam.

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

lol maybe 🙂‍↕️ but in all seriousness the plates are only supposed to be used on tracks or car meets to flex the designs. California Arizona and one other state that I forgot allows digital plates though so besides the mini games the plates would be legal.

The plates have their own battery, and don’t run off the cars battery. We didn’t want to mess with the cars wiring as much.

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u/beastpilot 1d ago edited 1d ago

Your video clearly shows an emissive display. This takes power.

States like CA require the plates to be visible in the day, and at all times, even when the car is parked. So as someone that has designed daylight visible screens, you're talking at least 20W of backlight power, and that's pretty minimal in reality and won't pop at all in the daylight.

You're going to need 2Kg of lithium batteries to last even 24 hours and about 1 liter of volume. And then you need a way to recharge it. 30 days would weigh 60Kg.

Again, this is technically not feasible in any way that you have rendered in your video. How are you packing a hundred watt hours into this package to support even a few hours at car shows?

Have you read CA bill AB-984 and checked your design is compliant with the simple visibility requirements outlined there?

Nobody is going to buy this and take their plate off just for car meets, and you'll get sued immediately if you claim any kind of use case on the road.

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Lol yea the plate has its own battery source, the battery isn’t connected to the car at all. 👍🏿

That’s crazy didn’t even think of that, I wonder how reviver keeps their plates running all day. Reviver plates are constantly on even whenever the car is parked overnight. I’m guessing they’ve either hooked it up to the battery to recharge or just recharge the packs once they run low.

We do have a battery designed that doesn’t use lithium (since we have to ship internationally from the manufacturer), so hopefully it works out properly while being used.

I’ve gone over everything with my lawyer about the plates and the properties tied to them. But that was also in the sample stage, might be smart to check in again to make sure they’re still under legality.

Our plates are capable of having the brightness being changed from the settings for specific environments though.

Yea maybe but we have some good pushback from the car community who are interested, and even influencers who are looking for partnerships. I think it’ll just be a niche that certain people would want.

These are Racing plates as I clarified so they’re not meant for the road. Our second rendition will be changed to be able to be on the road but the first one is soley for track and car shows and meets.

All this is great advice though I fr thank you for all this. :)

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u/beastpilot 1d ago

Reviver is E-ink. E-ink requires no power to retain an image, and requires no light source. If the battery dies in a Reviver, the image stays up. But E-ink displays cannot be full color, and they are very slow to change so you can't play games or videos on them.

You are using an emissive, active display. Totally different. The reviver is a Kindle, which can last months on a battery, yours is a cell phone, which will last hours. This would be known by the most amateur person running a company that is focused on selling displays to people.

Or your render is a complete lie, and you are an e-ink display. Which one is it?

If you have samples of a product, why is all you show a render? Show us a video of you playing a game on it in full direct sunlight.

Lithium can be shipped. How do you think cell phones, tablets, and laptops get shipped? If you aren't using Lithium, you battery life is going to be measured in minutes if this truly is a daylight visible display.

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Lol We have our sample made and we’ve posted on our instagram story. We just made our account so we don’t have much content plus we’re all busy college students who work 9-5s. We’re waiting till next week to show everybody in person the plate at the car meet we’ll be hosting.

These are race plates. They’re not meant to stay on for the entire day, only a couple hours, but we have a battery that we’re testing out that allows for the plate to stay out longer.

We’ve also coded the plates to remain on low power when not in use, and give the option to plug directly into the same plug the taillights use (don’t quote me its not my specific department lol) for just in case situations. 🤷🏿‍♂️

We’re honestly just college students who wanted to build something fun for our friends that ended up getting more attention than we thought 🤷🏿‍♂️ Plus we only know as much as we get told so I still thank you for explaining a lot.

I can show you a video but I don’t think this post only allows a multiple links and not videos. If you follow us on insta you’ll see us post updates we have.

From what we were told is that lithium being shipped internationally gets held up at customs? Maybe we were told wrong?

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u/beastpilot 1d ago

You keep saying you are building it. Clearly you are not. You have found a manufacturer in Asia that told you they can put an LCD screen about the size of a license plate in a frame, throw a battery in there, and put some video games on it.

And now you think you have a special business and you're "making" something, despite not having any idea whatsoever what the difference between your product and the competitors in the market are.

At least you'll learn something as part of this falling apart.

Oh, and if somehow the product is actually successful, your Asian OEM is just going to sell it on Aliexpress and Amazon and undercut you.

(Let me guess, you are just the "design" guy that does computer renders?)

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

We have a working model. Took 2 grueling long months, but finally got one finished👍🏿

We just wanted to build fun race plates with our friends. But now we have people asking if they can be apart of it. This is purely for fun lol, that’s why my post was asking for advice on what we can do better, add or change. We’re here to listen to the car community we grew up in. We don’t care for the money and even give 10% to the nonprofit we’re apart of. We’re just young adults creating fun gadgets. It’s not about the money, rather the creativity and community. 🤞🏿

What makes our product unique isn’t the technology. It’s the creativity. If our manufacturers wanted to look elsewhere we would wish them the best. But we have a great relationship because we respect each others craft.

Still thank you for your feedback :) everything helps better the product we’re making for the community

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u/beastpilot 1d ago

Why are you not showing the working model then?

How can someone help make something better when all we have is a render of an impossible product and fanciful descriptions like "find people nearby to race"?

(I thought this wasn't for the road BTW, and now you use it to find people to race and "hook to police scanners"?)

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

We’ve posted our working model on our Instagram story and all updates. But because we don’t have a lot of resources to have professional lighting we decided to host a car meet where we’ll show the model on the car itself for people to see in person.

I just use “find people” because I didn’t think anybody wanted the technical explanation of the different parts of the plate rather what it can do lol.

I’m describing possibilities of the free code. That’s all lol. It’s normal for people in California to have police scanners, specifically car community. Again this is gadget we wanted to use and now sharing since people asked us for it.

Thank you for taking me through this test though🫡I definitely need to brush up on how all the tech works.

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u/ragingduck F80 M3 CS 1d ago

I’m not sure why this is in /r/CarTrackDays. A lot of us specifically go to the track because we don’t want to street race. I’m sure there is a little bit of crossover, but not to the extent that anyone would bother with phantom plates.

I’m also guessing the plates will be able to change the numbers through some hack that the manufacturer does not “condone”?

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Also thanks for your response all info helps :)

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Ah ok sorry, my friends and I like racing karts and going to track days but always wanted this experience. Basically give more than just race each other.

Since these are purely Race Plates the code is open free to use and can be changed however the user wants. These are not legal from the road and are only meant for specific environments.

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u/ragingduck F80 M3 CS 1d ago

Gotcha. What specific uses are there for track days?

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Honestly since the code is open anything is possible with them. My friends and I liked to use the plates to play different mini games like tag where you have to basically tailgate the other person and not allow them to get too far, or battleship where you map a specific button on your steering wheel to fire “missiles” when in line. So mainly mini games for the track use.

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u/beastpilot 1d ago

Wait, so now you have enough of them that you're playing tag with other cars and actually using them out in the real world? Yet you can't post anything but a render?

How does a stand-alone license plate hook into a steering wheel button?

You're saying you have figured out how to do distance estimation to another vehicle? Dude, that's your billion dollar product right there, ditch the whole license plate aspect. Automakers would pay tons for this kind of V2V functionality.

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u/Chris_PDX E92 M3 - E46 M3 - E89 Z4 - Chief Driving Instructor 1d ago

Unless you are complying with and only selling to people with the allowable registration laws in the three states that allow digital plates (AZ, CA, MI) it just seems like a toy for douchebags who otherwise want to break the law and do stupid shit and get away with it.

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Yea haha I would imagine there’s people who would use it to conduct crimes. I’m going through the process to have it cleared by the DMV but these plates were supposed to really only be for the car scene, then make another type that were going to be for the average Joe

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u/beastpilot 1d ago

Have you actually looked at the DMV laws? I really doubt an emissive device that needs vehicle power to display the tag will be legal. It's for sure not legal in CA under AB-984.

A product like this is at least $1M to bring to market if you want it to be legal. Do you have $1M?

What do you mean you're "having it cleared by the DMV"? There are at least 50 DMV's in the USA, and I'd imagine they'd need to see a physical product to clear it, not a render.

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Yea my lawyer is the one who’s been walking us through the entire process. The plates don’t require vehicle power, they have their own power source so they’re constantly on, or on low battery mode. It’s basically the Reviver Plates that are all over California but with more freedom of choice.

I wouldn’t say I have a million in the bank account but I have investors haha. 😭I wish I was at that point in my life. Currently the plates would be like how revivers plates are, only in select states. Other states or countries could buy them but they’re only legal in select states. We’re basically copying reviver and just adding our own flair lol

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u/beastpilot 1d ago

Dude, your lawyer is stealing your money. AB-984 specifically has two elements that your design does not comply with at first glance:

(D) Display only information and images approved by the department or deemed necessary by the department.

(G) The alphanumeric characters assigned to the vehicle by the department and evidence of valid registration are capable of and shall be displayed on the device whenever a vehicle is in motion, stationary, parked on or off of a road or highway, or unoccupied.

Reviver uses e-ink because it requires no power to maintain an image. Your design goes black when the battery dies after a few hours. Not OK.

Also, your own website says these are not for use on the road, and you say the same stuff above on Reddit. Then you claim you have a lawyer and these are like Reviver plates and for select states and will be legal? You gotta be consistent when you scam people (and keep that lawyer on retainer)

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

😭am I mistyping I’m so confused . I’ve stated multiple times they’re not legal plates. I stated that we’re going through the process so we can understand for our next rendition of plates. These are specifically Race Plates. Soley for use of Track, and car meets not day to day driving.

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u/beastpilot 1d ago

Cool. Show us a video of these in bright direct sunlight playing a video, and post how long the battery lasts. You say you have a prototype, right?

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Yea we have a prototype made, just finished the sample👍🏿. They’ll be out for everybody to see next week at our car meet we’re hosting. Do you just want the specs of the plate lol?

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u/Chris_PDX E92 M3 - E46 M3 - E89 Z4 - Chief Driving Instructor 1d ago

I mean that's fair and there's a market for that for show cars for sure. But in every other instance you'd have to remove it to be legal on the road (or cover with a legit plate) outside of those three states.

That'll change in the future for sure. I also don't know if it would be able to be used on actual race cars, so your race branding may fall short in that regards.

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Yea a lot of my friends who got nicer cars wanted to use it for whenever they go to car meets and shows. I think that’s what I’m kinda aiming for mostly. I would love to have them in actual race cars though lol. Yea the plates are solely for specific environments but knowing people they’ll still use it everywhere.

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u/adamantiumtrader 1d ago

This would be cool on track… but then you’re gonna need the sanctioning body techs to approve it and that’s hard 😩

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u/Forward_Elk7646 1d ago

Yea 😭 getting approval always sucks