When I was a child, I asked a lot of annoying questions. Where do babies come from if the stork doesn’t bring them? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Do lightbulbs emit light or suck in darkness? Why do we say ‘it’s always in the last place you look’ when you stop looking once you find it?
Will we ever run out of available numberplate combinations for cars?
It seems like this last thing is something Honda has also been worrying about. To that end, the manufacturer’s been looking into the potential of emoji numberplates.
Honda wants to tap into the millennial market, which is apparently crying out for emojis on their cars. We all know they lap up those emojis like so many Starbucks soy frappuccinos. As the millennial generation kicked off in 1985 (I’m part of it! Yay!), the vast majority are now able to drive. And they want to take emojis with them wherever they go.
Shigatsu Baka, First Officer Of Licences at Honda UK, said of the idea:
“We are really excited to offer our customers a fun, quirky way to customise their car, which importantly, is reflective of their personality and lifestyle. At Honda, we believe in innovation – and this concept is sure to be well-received by younger consumers for whom emojis are such a popular way of communicating.”
Basically, give the public what they want.
So you can get an idea of how it’s going to look, Honda’s put an example emoji plate on the Civic Type R. Here it is:
I think that says ‘Honda’. I’m not completely sure, my translation plug-in for Firefox needs updating. There’s definitely a lot of car-related emojis in the mix. It’s just missing the ‘pedal to the metal’-moji, really.
Obviously we won’t call them numberplates if they don’t have numbers. They’ll be emojiplates. Watch out for that new word making its way into the Oxford English Dictionary some time next year.
Honda’s tentatively agreed with the DVLA that emojiplates will be exclusively available for their cars from 2017 on.
I can’t even drive, and I know exactly what I want. Three laugh-cry faces, a high-heeled shoe, a noodle bowl, and that one where an emoji lady is getting her nails painted.
