The function of knowing whether a car is licensed/registered can be accomplished without an ID number (it's not like the stickers they use to show tag expiration have ID numbers).
Similarly, ID'ing a car can now be done with some kind of air-tag like device that could also be privacy protecting.
So if I witness a crime, how would I report the car that committed it? Would my phone give me a list of all the nearby vehicles and then give me some ID number to report?
That system would be cool if it worked, but it would be very complicated to implement.
We're at the point where they can probably just run a photo of the driver against the driver's license photo DB and skip the plate part. That way there's no incentive to steal or obfuscate plates and bring trouble to innocent people either.
The function of knowing whether a car is licensed/registered can be accomplished without an ID number (it's not like the stickers they use to show tag expiration have ID numbers).
Similarly, ID'ing a car can now be done with some kind of air-tag like device that could also be privacy protecting.