[anitil]

You're very right.

At a quick glance, this thing is going to need power, probably from the car battery. You don't want it to catch fire and kill the occupants, so there's going to be R&D in power supplies, material etc, along with regulation and testing.

[dna_polymerase]

Sure, if there never was something before hooked to a car battery. Or if the material would have to be kryptonite. $86 Million is just a way way way to high number for such a project. Of course the 57 lines here won't do it in production and I acknowledge a certain need for R&D but this number is just too high.

[Retric]

Reading plates is likely a small fraction of overall costs. Consider, with 220 people cars in a trial your going to need someone to write a manual / answer help desk questions / etc. which have nothing to do with the actual device but do add costs.

As to the device it needs to do more than just read licence plates. It must compare them with something which means it needs to get over the air updates for a list of licence plates. So, now you need some back end system to get important lists of licence plates from various other systems. As to the device, how much coverage does it get aka does it need multiple cameras.

And on it goes.

[taitems]

Emergency services vehicles run so much equipment they have isolated power from engine power.

[mchahn]

I have noticed here in California the the police always leave their patrol cars running when parked. I was entering a restaurant a saw a patrol car running. I saw the officer inside and asked him why they leave the cars running. I asked him if was to be ready to take off fast.

He laughed and said that there is so much electronics inside that the battery would run down during lunch.

I didn't think to ask why they didn't turn off the electronics. I also didn't ask what they do at the end of the day.

[KGIII]

Boot up times for the computer(s). That takes a while, though I imagine it is getting faster.

[anitil]

Huh there you go! thanks

[toopok4k3]

Or you know, make the software for smartphone?