The thing about most Tesla owners is that they are, generally, total nerds. If they're not nerds, they're huge proponents of the EV, and everything about this lifestyle. Now there's nothing terrible about EVs, nor are they bad things. That being said, there is no reason (yet) to be an absolute proponent of electric vehicles, as they still have many flaws and in many cases are just as damaging to man, the Earth, and its ecosystems.
As more and more car companies turn to EV, the dangers only grow larger. Mining rare earth metals grows exponentially with skyrocketing demands, more often than not to the detriment of not only the environment but also to the countries from which these metals are sourced. The materials used for these EV's are often not petroleum free, as they rely on plastics for building, a material known to be detrimental to entire ecosystems.
Add to this the fact that in order to have an EV, an EV needs to be made. Building any new car creates a huge carbon footprint. There are a billion cars on this planet still running, it's hard to argue that we need more. The greenest car you can buy is still a used one. But these facts rarely weigh on the minds of EV people, and buying a brand new Tesla as a status symbol is all that's important to many. This leads to some pretty funny (and nerdy) vanity plates attached to Teslas.
19 Bye Bye, Gas
This longtime Tesla owner from Maryland has been saying farewell to gasoline for a considerably long amount of time. How long does a typical goodbye last? In this case, it seems that they've been saying goodbye for about 13 years now.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe it's a little less if they didn't buy this one brand new. But then again, that seems to be what most Tesla owners do, buy a brand new car when there are plenty of perfectly good used ones still around.
18 Charge Me
If a Tesla could talk, would it be as needy and demanding as this person has made it out to be? That is the question. If they're anything like their owners, perhaps they might just be that. It would be easy to see a Tesla barking this order, "charge me," actually.
They need to be charged a lot, too, actually, and the amount of time they spend on the port is much longer than it takes to fill up at the pump, making road trips an absolute nightmare.
17 CO2 Free
This bright red Tesla Model S from Arizona has a vanity plate that claims that it's carbon dioxide free. While this claim may be true in the sense that the car itself emits no carbon dioxide, it's not necessarily true in many other senses.
It all depends on where the electricity comes from, because if it's dirty electricity, which there is still quite a lot of in many cities around the globe, then the Tesla quickly becomes one of the least sustainable forms of transportation out there. Plus how much carbon dioxide was used to make this brand new car?
16 I'm Green, Are You?
The fact that a vanity plate is character limited has led to some seriously creative decisions and abbreviations to allow people to say just what they want to say on their license plates. This one here is a case in point.
At first glance, it's really difficult to decipher, but eventually, it becomes clear that it reads "I'm green, are you," even though it really doesn't look like it. As to whether or not a Tesla is green, there are a lot of potential hazards with the EV industry, so don't get your hopes up just yet.
15 Lol, Watt?
Wordplay is always an amusing thing to use when it comes to a good vanity plate, and the simpler it is, the better, the shorter, the better. Extra bonus points for the person who can do it without any abbreviations, either.
While technically "lol" is an abbreviation, it's not one that's purposefully been abbreviated to fit into a vanity plate, it's already a colloquial term. So to have a vanity plate that reads "lol watt," but is a play on the phrase "lol what," is a classic and simple pun that gets a stamp of approval from us.
14 Nikola
When it comes to originality, this vanity plate doesn't really have very much of it. It's pretty obvious that the company was named after Nikola Tesla, the engineer who for all intents and purposes discovered and understood electricity better than anyone (including Edison).
While it also is quite dubious as to whether Nikola Tesla would approve of such a creation as the electric car, he would at the least find it fascinating. Again, though, that is no reason to put his first name onto a vanity plate.
13 No Gas
The Tesla over the course of its life will never use a drop of gas, and that is a pretty spectacular thing, there's no denying that fact, especially considering that conventional cars will always need fuel.
But it wasn't a no gas kind of operation to make this thing, as the amount of gas used to source the materials from around the world created quite a large carbon footprint, as did the factories necessary to make the components. Mining the materials for batteries is the biggest unknown, as we are yet unsure of the environmental impacts.
12 No More Gas
It must feel pretty good to know that once you get a Tesla, you'll never have to buy gas again. It seems like a pretty awesome step forward when it comes to environmental sustainability. But, to go out and buy one because you can doesn't mean it's green.
There are dozens of factors behind whether or not a Tesla is the greenest option for you. Where does the electricity you use to power it come from? Is it from coal? From hydroelectric plant? Damming our rivers has proven to be detrimental to our environments an the ecosystems that rely on those rivers.
11 No Petroleum
No more petroleum is what this license plate is likely referring to, or petrol, either way. And they should be glad that they are no longer using petroleum to run their car because it is not sustainable to use gasoline like we currently are as a species.
But, there's more to petroleum than just fuel, as this car has quite a lot of plastic components on it. And what is plastic made of? Petroleum. So here we have a big issue, as plastic is quickly proving to be one of the worst poisons for the Earth and its ecosystems.
10 Power Up!
Powering up a Tesla takes electricity, a lot of it, and it takes time, a lot of that, too. But once it is powered up, things really take off, because a Tesla is insanely fast, and has immediate, raw torque available more instantly than any petrol-powered car.
And as a side note, there really isn't more of a nerdy sounding vanity plate out there than this one, where it just seems like it needs to have an explanation on the end of it as if it came straight out of a comic book or a video game. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as I personally love video games.
9 REVOLT (No Pun Intended)
This vanity license plate is surprisingly clever in a lot of different ways, and the more you think about it, the more meanings seem to unfold with such a simple statement. Not even a statement, actually, but a single word, and nothing more.
There's the obvious pun in regards to volts, as this car runs on the voltage from its batteries, and the fact that it needs to be recharged. Then there's the fact that Tesla is a revolt against the current industry of oil, or at least it should be that, a revolt against unsustainability. Or at least it should be.
8 So Amped
Geeky license plates abound when Tesla owners decide to pay that extra chunk of change for a personalized vanity plate. This one, for instance, is just such a perfect example of just how geeky a vanity plate can get.
Not only is this Tesla owner making a clever play on words, but they are also clearly very excited about it. The owner really is "so amped," to have an electric powered car. Meaning that they're excited. But, also because their car runs on amps (and volts).
7 Tork Lift
This Tesla is, in fact, most definitely not a forklift, but it does have a lot of torque, and so the play on words here comes from the fact that this car has an insane amount of torque.
Clearly, it's spelled wrong, as "tork" is not a real word. But, there's the age-old dilemma of how to fit something longer than eight characters into a vanity plate while still conveying the same idea and not confusing people. This is a pretty good one, but it is annoying that torque is spelled so wrong.
6 Why Pump Gas?
This person, in seven characters, has asked a very big and interesting question, and they've done it by only using a personalized vanity license plate. Good for them, actually, even though there is a despicable amount of abbreviation.
Why should you pump gas? It's quite unsustainable. But then again, it takes a very tiny fraction of the time it takes to recharge a Tesla (though that's changing). They ask a very good question, that's for sure, and one worth thinking about for longer than it takes to read it abbreviated.
5 You Have Gas
This person from Virginia is perhaps a smidge less mature than the rest of us, or at least that's what we'd like to tell ourselves (though let's be real, we all find this very funny, even if we don't want to). But they're not wrong, and if taken literally, has no alternative meanings.
We as petrol users have gas, gasoline that is, and Tesla owners, or other EV owners, do not have gas. It's a simple fact, really, and if you think it's funny then perhaps this owner isn't the immature one after all. (Or we all are).
4 Zero Miles Per Gallon
This vanity plate seems like it's actually saying a very bad thing, that their car is badly inefficient because it gets zero miles per gallon. If sixty miles per gallon is good, then zero must be bad, right?
Wrong, because while there are some glaring issues with the sustainability of EV types, they are a step in the right direction, and they get zero miles per gallon because they don't use any gas at all. In a sense, they get infinite miles to the gallon, though that isn't really accurate either. Everything has a price bigger than money, and an environmental impact that is often well hidden behind the titan of industry.
3 "Elechik"
When it comes to wanting to broadcast something that everyone already knows the instant they recognize this car as a Tesla, and then realizing that this said word is one letter too long to put onto a vanity plate, what else is there to do but this?
Why not just spell the eight letter word "electric" completely wrong, shorten it by spelling it phonetically, and phonetically wrong at that, and ending up with "elechik." It doesn't make much knowledgable sense, but hey, at least it is unique.
2 A Bit Unimaginative
Labeling this car a Tesla EV by putting those exact two words onto a vanity plate is a bit like labeling a label with the label, "label." Yeah, it's redundant. And unimaginative. Of all the possible clever vanity plates for your no-juice-mobile, of which there are quite a few even in this list, why choose this one?
It must be because the owner of this Tesla EV is Captain Obvious himself, the very one. It would make a lot of sense, considering the amount of obviousness demonstrated here. If only they had made the vanity plate say "Model S" instead.
1 All Amps
This impeccably clean Model S Tesla has a license plate that reads "all amps," and that couldn't be anything but not quite the truth. This Tesla does not, in fact, run on all amps, even though it does use a lot of amps.
Any power source has both volts and amps, not just one or the other, and this is most definitely true of Tesla batteries, as they require both to run and output both while in use. But, then again, "partially amps," wouldn't quite fit on a vanity plate.
Sources: Tesla Motors Club, Gas 2 & Clean Technica