Choosing Vanity Plates for your Tesla

I’ve never really considered myself as being much of a vanity plate type of person, until my wife purchased a custom license plate with my company name on it as a Father’s day gift. I ended up using these plates on my previous SUV before transferring it over to my Model S.

It’s been years since I’ve had this plate on so I’m thinking about finally making a change to something else.

 

Tesla Vanity Plates

The Tesla community has been known to be one of the more creative groups when it comes to picking out vanity plates. Sometimes the plates are meant to express life with an electric vehicle (ex. “AMPED“), and other times their statements showing their support for Tesla or Elon (ex. “L♥TESLA“). And then you have the anti oil/gas/pollution crowd making bold statements through their vanity plates (ex. “LOL OIL“). Plates that are suggestive and offensive in nature are generally prohibited by the Motor Vehicle department.

Check out some of the popular Tesla vanity plates we captured while attending a Tesla owners rally.

 

“PlugR In” Vanity Plate [Source: TeslaPittsburgh]

Vanity Plate Options

I could go a few different directions when it comes to selecting a vanity plate.

  • Go with a standard issue plate — just give up the vanity plate and save a few bucks ($50/year). This is the cheap and easy route.
  • Go with the special Massachusetts Electric Vehicle (EV) plate. This plate is meant to indicate to first responders that there’s high voltage in the car and they need to take special precautions. Presumably this is because EVs are still not that common and first responders need to be mindful when working on these vehicles. This type of plate is free and really stands apart from a regular plate.
  • A vanity plate representing the Teslaliving brand which I publish through my blog and twitter

Note: Each state has their own rules around vanity plates. In MA vanity plates can be up to 6 characters and can not have mixed letters/numbers or any punctuation. So “WATT UP” is not possible, it has a space and would be 7 characters long.

  • A vanity plate along the lines of what other owners have done in support for Tesla, EVs or the green/anti-pollution side of things.

A Short List of Vanity Plate Ideas

I trolled the Tesla and TMC forums and came up with a list. I ended up with almost 40. Some are ones other owners (in other states) have used, some were derivatives of those and some were new ones I came up with. Sitting with the family we whittled it down to our top 10 (not in any particular order):

  1. AMPED – Used by some other owners but a favorite of mine
  2. GO CART – I always feel like I’m driving a go cart with regenerative braking
  3. NITE RDR – Couldn’t help adding this one. KITT is one someone else has too
  4. OUTA GAS – I’m not big on oil bashing but this one caught my eye
  5. TLIVNG – Teslaliving — my brand
  6. TLVNG – Teslaliving — my brand
  7. WATTS UP – Too many characters but I like the cheerfulness of this one
  8. WEQVA – The geek in me, 1 WATT = 1 Volt x 1 Amp, W = VA.
  9. WRTH IT – Everyone knows the Model S is expensive. But it’s worth it!
  10. WT FRUNK – The front trunk or frunk is quirky, this one is cute but perhaps not always appropriate.

Several of the above are 7 characters so I’d have to adjust them to be shorter but still be able to retain the meaning behind it.

Decision Time

Im bouncing this list off of my family, friends and some people in the Tesla community including my twitter followers via a poll, and you!

Which way do you think I should go? Drop me a note in the comments below.

Do you have a vanity plate? What is it? What’s the story behind it?

Don’t have a Tesla yet? If you got one, what plate would you be wearing?

I’ll let you all know what I end up going with. Stay tuned.

Rob M.: "Rob's passion is technology and gadgets. An engineer by profession and an executive and founder at several high tech startups Rob has a unique view on technology and some strong opinions. When he's not writing about Tesla
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