The ultimate proof of ownership is a piece of paper.

You can do a lot of stuff electronically in my state, transferring a title isn't one of them.

Additional fun thing is that the buyer is supposed to go do that and it can cause the seller headaches if they don't.

Some states now have digital titles … no paper.

> WTF? This must be because of willful political sabotage?

It's not sabotage, it's the fact that the government wants a leash on you. I had an experience in the past with the CA DMV where simply forgetting to "de-register" a broken, non-functional motorcycle resulted in the state levying my bank account for hundreds of dollars in registration fees. The FTB had the money debited right out of my account, no different than if someone committed wire fraud.

I have to assume that you don't live in the US. The license plate can't always follow the car: each state has its own license plate(s) and DMV and rules, etc. e.g., I got a nastygram from New York state when I moved out of state and didn't turn in my plates. OTOH, in Minnesota, they tell you to do whatever you want with them: turn them in, throw them out in the recycling, etc. Some people have license plate collections on their garage walls.

If a license is stolen, You need to go into the DMV because they'll have to take a new photo. There was a temporary exception due to COVID, but I think that's no longer available since I had to go into the office when my license expired.

>The license plate should follow the car and ownership should be changed online as part of the transaction. It sounds incredibly wasteful that every time a car changes ownership the seller must hand over the plates in person to the DMV.

There's too many personalized plates and other exceptions in the US to make that viable.

The plates go with the vehicle in California most of the time. It just gets complicated when you sell to someone out of state because you have to turn the plates in yourself. If you a used car in CA, it's not unusual for the plates to be the same plates the car had since it was first registered in the state.

We bought our last family car from enterprise and one day this family walked by while my mom was waiting for me in the store parking lot. The kid recognized our car as a rental they had on a road trip once and got excited about it. Awkward. xD

Custom plates are weird. You can either give them to the new owner or transfer them to another vehicle or return them to the DMV.

Do you know how'd it'd work for plates like ham radio ones where you CAN'T transfer them to another another person, but it'd also make no sense to turn them in? Can you keep them to use on another car eventually?

This whole "turn in the plates or we'll go after you for not having insurance" seems completely insane. I've never turned in plates and no one's cared.

You actually can do that, I had to dig around to find the page lol.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/vehicle-industry-regi...

Some plates have retention fees, some don't. YMMV.

Except that’s exactly how it works in many states. If you want to keep your personalized plate, you have to jump through hoops, but it defaults to go with the car in the two states I’ve lived in.

Interesting, it's actually not allowed in the 3 states I've registered a car in. In NJ, they wouldn't even allow transferring a regular plate from our old volvo (registered in my dad's name) to our new town and country (registered in my mom's), because they were owned by different people as far as the state was concerned.