California Is About To Run Out of License Plate Numbers (thedrive.com) 160
California is projected to run out of its current license plate number format by the end of 2025, prompting a transition to a new sequence that flips the current structure. The new format will consist of three numbers, three letters, and one number and will debut soon. The Drive reports: The current system for non-commercial vehicles, which consists of one number, three letters, and three numbers, was rolled out in 1980, and the DMV expects this sequence to run its course before the year is out. But, running out of license plate numbers isn't as alarming as it might sound: California officials has already announced the next sequence.
It's relatively difficult to predict precisely when California will issue its last current-style plate, but in June 2024, The Sacramento Bee wrote that the California DMV was sitting on about 18 months' worth of license plate numbers, pegging the final current-style plate for the end of the year. The system, which started with 1AAA000, will be replaced with its reverse. The new system will consist of three numbers, three letters, and one number, so the first one could be something like 000AAA1 or 001AAA1 or 100AAA1 depending on whether or how they exactly implement the existing "no leading zeroes" rule.
It's relatively difficult to predict precisely when California will issue its last current-style plate, but in June 2024, The Sacramento Bee wrote that the California DMV was sitting on about 18 months' worth of license plate numbers, pegging the final current-style plate for the end of the year. The system, which started with 1AAA000, will be replaced with its reverse. The new system will consist of three numbers, three letters, and one number, so the first one could be something like 000AAA1 or 001AAA1 or 100AAA1 depending on whether or how they exactly implement the existing "no leading zeroes" rule.
Should copy Virginia - Personalize! (Score:5, Funny)
$10/year for personalized plates. Makes driving that much more entertaining.
And the ever hilarious VA "Kids First" plate someone registered with "EAT THE" party poopers complained and got it revoked.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
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It's a custom request, should be absolutely legal to charge extra for it.
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It should cost extra to have the plate made, sure. But it shouldn't (as some jurisdictions I know of here in Australia do) have an additional annual fee for the personalized plate.
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now you're getting into minutia of cost vs benefit. If it's legal to charge extra for a custom request, it's legal to charge extra regardless of how that's structured.
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Nothing in the US Constitution prohibits states from charging for things. I think even getting a legal copy of a birth certificate costs around $35 depending on the state. Which you need to provide if want a Real ID compliant driver's license or state id. (not every American has a birth certificate for Real ID). And the next step is all states will require a Real ID for voting. Which will be fun because you pay for the ID and pay for the birth certificate and may or may not have the other paperwork you nee
Re:Should copy Virginia - Personalize! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not fascinating, interesting, in the sense of "may you live in interesting times".
Perhaps California has made the weird decision that so called "Vanity Plates" are illegal. Most states just do them, and charge a small amount for it. I have an Amateur Radio license plate.
But damn, must be a slow news day - wut, no AI apocalypse stories for us to all wring our hands about?
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I think the AIcalypse has been less popular recently than the neverending "Sam Altman (or some other LLM peddler) thinks ..." articles.
Speaking of which, what is Sam Altman thinking? It's been almost a day without the site being his personal news clipping service.
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I think the AIcalypse has been less popular recently than the neverending "Sam Altman (or some other LLM peddler) thinks ..." articles.
Speaking of which, what is Sam Altman thinking? It's been almost a day without the site being his personal news clipping service.
It's kind of like how cryptolibs bash Texas, and Cryptoconservatives go nuts about California. And Altman is kind of a dick.
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no AI apocalypse stories for us to all wring our hands about?
I like to tell people clutching their pearls over AI that I'm not worried. AI's attention span is only as long as it's power cords and I have wire cutters.
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no AI apocalypse stories for us to all wring our hands about?
I like to tell people clutching their pearls over AI that I'm not worried. AI's attention span is only as long as it's power cords and I have wire cutters.
Gonna be a lot of money vaporizing overnight when the bubble bursts. It's way too schizophrenic for good use.
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Tennessee gives emergency tags (same plate any non-governmental emergency vehicle like VFD, rescue squads, etc get) to anyone with an amateur radio license, and the tag is customized with your call sign.
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Tennessee gives emergency tags (same plate any non-governmental emergency vehicle like VFD, rescue squads, etc get) to anyone with an amateur radio license, and the tag is customized with your call sign.
Interesting! Are there any privileges that go with that?
Warning rather than a ticket (Score:2)
Tennessee gives emergency tags (same plate any non-governmental emergency vehicle like VFD, rescue squads, etc get) to anyone with an amateur radio license, and the tag is customized with your call sign.
Interesting! Are there any privileges that go with that?
None. Other than a cop pulling you over might think you are likely to be a nerdy type willing to help out with communications during a disaster. So, live up to their expectation and you might just get a warning rather than a ticket.
Grew up around a couple of those, met a couple more at work. One's a volunteer fireman. Another volunteers with forest service. Another volunteers with Sheriff's department (Search and Rescue). I have no idea if these are outliers or is volunteering is common in HAM Radio cult
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Perhaps California has made the weird decision that so called "Vanity Plates" are illegal.
Perhaps [ca.gov] you should learn to internet [google.com].
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Perhaps California has made the weird decision that so called "Vanity Plates" are illegal.
Perhaps [ca.gov] you should learn to internet [google.com].
That's your job, homie. As my cabana boy, you did well, keep up the good work.
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As my cabana boy
You seem to owe me back wages.
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No, California allows custom plates. The people who decide whether or not any given plate is "acceptable" are a band of petty little tyrants and miserable prigs with no joy or humor in their lives and no awareness of pop culture (Star Wars, in my case when my plate request was thwarted.) and harmless references to it. But if you can come up with a string of 2-7 characters that have meaning to you, but otherwise look like any other string of 2-7 characters to anyone who is not you; you *might* be able get
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Perhaps California has made the weird decision that so called "Vanity Plates" are illegal. Most states just do them, and charge a small amount for it. I have an Amateur Radio license plate.
Nope. California calls them "special interest" plates, and charges from $50 to $103 for a set, depending on the configuration.
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And the ever hilarious VA "Kids First" plate someone registered with "EAT THE" party poopers complained and got it revoked.
They cracked down on personalized plates about 10 years ago. I had my firearm related personalized plate revoked for no apparent reason after having it for a decade.
Best I've heard of was another state where a mother had "PB4WEGO" on her minivan before the state revoked it.
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Re: Should copy Virginia - Personalize! (Score:2)
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My highly political fav currently is
CK TRU
with the FU euro country style sticker before it and the MP euro sticker after it
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And the ever hilarious VA "Kids First" plate someone registered with "EAT THE" party poopers complained and got it revoked.
It's really disappointing how people with no sense of humor have to ruin things for the rest of us.
Best regular plate ever: (Score:2)
5EXB055, seen in Tracy Calif.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
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California has had personalized plates for years and they cost between $50-$103 per year: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/license-plates-decals-and-placards/license-plates/order-special-interest-and-personalized-license-plates/ [ca.gov]
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California personalized plates are $50-$103 initially, then an $40-$83/year for renewal.
Re: Should copy Virginia - Personalize! (Score:2)
If you are recalling the same study I'm thinking of, it was a correlation between the number of stickers regardless of content, and road rage.
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hey neato I found the slashdot discussion [slashdot.org].
wow, look at how many comments a story could get back in the good old pre-cryptocuck days.
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yeah I totally bet those cars covered with PEACE stickers are real trouble makers. Most people aren't PETA.
And a single personalized plate or bumper sticker isn't at all the same as someone with the entire rear end covered in them.
Re: Should copy Virginia - Personalize! (Score:2)
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You've pretty much got California down. There are some areas with Republicans in charge, but they're small and limited. The Democratic leadership own this state as a personal fiefdom, and you'd better not forget it. They don't even pretend otherwise any more. In fact, they literally brag about [politico.com] how corrupt they are.
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You talk about this like the deep South or the Midwest doesnt have this exact same problem of being a "fiefdom" of a single political party. Or is it only a thing if it's Democrats?
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The issue was California's much higher fees for vanity plates. What states do you believe they're higher than?
But good attempt to change the subject. It failed, of course, but you can't be blamed for being a pathetic loser. You were born that way.
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I'm not discussing licences plates and neither was the person I was addressing. Both of us where taking about their claim of California being a "Democratic fiefdom" and I was addressing their characterization of that.
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But good attempt to change the subject. It failed, of course, but you can't be blamed for being a pathetic loser. You were born that way.
Oh and at least I can fucking read.
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You seem to be under the misguided notion that the end result you describe - and you're right - was the specific goal to begin with.
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Fun fact, Texas has higher gov't costs than CA. They just call them fees instead of taxes.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]
Unless of course you make well into 6 or 7 figures, then those fees aren't an issue. But the plebes who love MAGA get shafted and say thank you.
7 slots. a-z + 1-9 (no 0 because O vs 0) (Score:4, Interesting)
= 64,339,296,875 possible plate combinations.
We love cars, but we're gonna be fine.
Re: 7 slots. a-z + 1-9 (no 0 because O vs 0) (Score:3, Insightful)
Only assuming the number is completely unstructured. The current and new formats each allow 10^4 * 24^3 (assuming no o or i) which is 138,240,000. California has about 1.8m new cars a year, so this new format is good for about 76 years.
Re: 7 slots. a-z + 1-9 (no 0 because O vs 0) (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that the current one lasted 45 years. No leading zeroes accounts for a bit of the discrepancy, but there must be some additional factor at play.
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Hmm, well I used the figure for car sales, but I guess commercial vehicles and motorbikes need to be added on. Then there's cars being re-registered from other states. Do cars get a new number if they're de-registered and re-registered later? And I guess some combinations are probably banned as they spell something offensive. Some numbers seem to have been skipped, and you need a bit of headroom to give you time to bring in a new system. So 45 years is about right.
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commercial vehicles and motorbikes need to be added on
Typically, those use numbers from a different space.
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Do they not recycle numbers?
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Do they not recycle numbers?
That would be a good question - apparently California does not. Certainly in my state of PA, there is nothing prohibiting it.
If I were to hazard a guess, the Cali system was designed long before it was so easy to track different license numbers, as in they were kept track of on paper.
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Do they not recycle numbers?
They can't. In California, if you can find a set of California plates that have been registered at some time in the past, you can bring them to the DMV and get them registered again to your car. If they recycled numbers, there could be duplicate registrations (or they would have to change the rules on re-using using old plates).
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Only assuming the number is completely unstructured. The current and new formats each allow 10^4 * 24^3 (assuming no o or i) which is 138,240,000. California has about 1.8m new cars a year, so this new format is good for about 76 years.
There's only a problem because the DMV is being lazy. As of Jan 1, 2025, there were 35,983,261 cars registered in California. If the DMV wanted to use all available numbers, there would be plenty of numbers. After all, the population of California is basically flat, and generally when people get a new car, they retire the old one, so the total number of cars is basically stable.
There's only a number shortage because the DMV is not reusing previously allocated numbers.
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There's only a number shortage because the DMV is not reusing previously allocated numbers.
I have the old California plates off my car from when I registered it in California. I could ship the car back to California and demand that my old plates be reinstated.
Re:7 slots. a-z + 1-9 (no 0 because O vs 0) (Score:5, Funny)
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What we need is base64-encoded QR codes on plates. That'd fix the problem.
We should switch to 128-bit plate numbers so we'll be sure we never run out. They'll be kind of unwieldy, but that's easy to manage if we define a convention for abbreviating out long strings of zero bits. Say, if you have a chunk of zeros you can replace them with "::", or something like that. Oh, and we can also use this to assign many plate numbers to each car, so car owners can change their plates regularly without needing a new number assigned by the state. For example, we could reserve the last 48
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Even after this scheme is available for decades, car owners are going to share one old style plate with everyone on their block because nobody will even give them a new style plate.
Why so many? (Score:2, Troll)
= 64,339,296,875 possible plate combinations.
We love cars, but we're gonna be fine.
Why so many number plates, and so many new cars needing them?
Oh, yeah right: because having an actual public transport system that works in the USA is considered "communism".
(Said as a smug European).
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Yeah. I want to take a bus to Costco and try bringing home two carts full groceries every week, along with my wheelchair, on that bus. Sounds like a wonderful idea.
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Free delivery generally fixes that issue.
Even if it cost a little more, getting rid of the cost of a vehicle would pay for weekly deliveries easily.
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I just buy a few things pretty much every day on the way home from work.
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Two carts of groceries for a week? I can see why you'd need the wheelchair.
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There is a reason why the likes of Costco are virtually non-existant here. People simply don't buy in bulk.
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In CA,, the handicapped (disabled person) plates have their own namespace, which is (depending upon the year of issuance), leading DP or trailing DP (source: I used to have a van with DP plates before my wife passed from ALS).
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CORRECTION:
Leading DP + 5 digits or 5 digits + Trailing DP.
This was as of 2011, so your mileage may vary.
Expand the character set (Score:3)
I would suggest adding @, $. #, %, and &. As possible numbers.
This would expand the space that consists of 3 numbers from 1000 to 3375; a 340% increase in the number of available sequences.
Re:Expand the character set (Score:4, Interesting)
You're on a computer technology Web site. A, B, C, D, E and F are perfectly acceptable (hexadecimal) digits to expand the numbering scheme, and won't make license plates look like cartoon profanity.
Re:Expand the character set (Score:4, Funny)
Why not just go the whole way and issue GUIDs?
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Encoded how? We use letters in some positions on license plate numbers because there are more than 16 letters. Still, an eight-digit base32 number is only 40 bits, versus 128 bits for a GUID. Eight-character license plates are already pushing the limit of readability with the current US plate width.
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I want one that just says @$#%&!
I have a solution! (Score:5, Funny)
"Numberplate Address Translation"
Most cars rarely leave their home town. So allocate number plates to each city. Then cities issue their own internal number plates, and any cars leaving the city just borrow a city-owned plate for the trip. The city keeps a registrar of which local plate corresponds to which state plate at any given time.
This of course is just a temporary measure, until the new national 16-letter number-plate system is launched. It will take a few years for everyone to update their forms to accommodate that.
Re:I have a solution! (Score:5, Informative)
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Many states in the south love to put the owner's county of residence on their plates.
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Nebraska, right in the middle, does as well.
Given that they number by population, IE omaha is #1, Lincoln #2, and so on. There is a touch of an issue because 63 and 64 trade places regularly.
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The first letter - eg L for London or S for Scotland is usually pretty obvious. The second letter, obviously not so much.
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That is done in many parts of the world. Germany is a fun one. Every time you see someone from Nord Hoorn (a town on the Dutch border) where the license plates start with NOH you can pick on them by calling them Nord-Oost Hollanders. They really like that and will welcome you with open arms. Trust me. Totally not with clenched fists.
It's also done in Austria (where they put the flag of the municipality registering it as well)
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Texas is getting close too (Score:3)
We had something similar in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
Re: We had something similar in the UK (Score:2)
Our (California's) plates also stay with the vehicle as long as the registration doesn't lapse, and sometimes then as well.
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The dimensions of the plate and the letters are mandated, but other than that, each state does its own thing. They introduce new color schemes including pictorial backgrounds apparently at their own whims. California has like five different custom plates with various exorbitant prices.
LPv6 (Score:3)
I really don't think they will end up rolling out the new license plates (LPv6) as soon as predicted. Most of the existing license plates will just be used behind a NAT.
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Not in America. Lending out your car to multiple drivers is something not done in the land of abundance. It's for poor people.
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Hmmm what would be the license plate equivalent of ::1 ?
Give each car an IPv6 address (Score:3)
The next number in the sequence is obvious, it is (Score:2)
It would look like "A111AAA"
You don't even need to count in Hex for this to make sense.
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Quadruple the number and call it license plAAAAtes. Then wait 20 years for everyone to upgrade to a new plate.
Oh noes! (Score:2)
This means no more cars can be sold in California. There's no solution, we're fucked.
Stop registering cars then (Score:2)
Why not (Score:2)
Why not just have car manufacturers hard code (stamp) a number onto the back of every car? This would eliminate the need for plates all together. When you purchase the car the license number is automatically associated with the buyer. This would eliminate the hassle of visiting the DMV for plates and registration (which I loath) and also save a ton of metal resources on the plates themselves. Seems so obvious to me.
Too many cars (Score:2)
Maybe the problem is not having few letters on the plates, but too many cars that need plates.
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So what you're saying is, too many people are financially able to achieve major goals, like owning a car (or 2 or 3)? No, we can't have that. Make everyone poor again, that will fix the problem.
It's time for a new format (Score:2)
Time for LPv6, a.k.a. License Plate v6
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On that note, I am actually from Greenland and we absolutely hate the idea of the United States invading Greenland
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While you might expect tariffs, a full embargo would be very bad for the states providing the electricity now. They wouldn't cut the cord.
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The actions of the current administration suggest you might be a wee bit over-optimistic, especially given how much Trump hates California (and not without reason).
And even tariffs would be catastrophic in a state as close to bankruptcy, from the state government all the way down to the lowest serf, as California.