Allowing the prefix to be a letter would give you 3.6x as many plates. Plenty of time for next to no effort or change.

Getting cited by the police for waving around a sign stating “The End Is Near” on the Golden Gate Bridge? Now that's what I call dedication!

The black background with yellow text was probably the coolest looking classic plate.

12:58 good luck remembering the license plate of a hit and run

The enforcement officer telling you not to hold up a fake protest sign is San Francisco politics at its finest

Hearing that California may have to rethink a 7 digit combination is mind-boggling when you find out Rhode Island switched to 6 digits as late as 1996.

A couple weeks ago I started noticing newer model cars with “9” prefix plates. I wondered what would happen once there were no more plates available and questioned the history of the CA plate’s numbering convention. Today I came across this video. So cool!

“1ZZZ123” combination type plates have already been used extensively until 2015ish. They’re LIVERY plates for transport buses, limos, TCP vehicles. So we might run out a little sooner than projected.

Hey Rob, excellent work. As a a California license plate collector/enthusiast/expert/historian, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I'm currently working on a database of California plate sequences organized by month and year, and I have over 1,000 catalogued so far. I haven't put it online yet, but I plan to soon. I have a few small corrections to add, which are minor but noticeable to sticklers like me: - The first vanity plate was "AMIGO", issued in 1970, not 1972 - The Golden State plates came out in December 1982, not 1980 - The sequences of the seven-digit plates started at 1AAA000, not 1AAA111, and they weren't exhausted all the way through (they ended at 1SWC999)... the later series like "1U" were reserved for specialty plates that came out later, like the Lake Tahoe plates Other than that, fantastic job. My favorite part was the sign waving on the Golden Gate bridge at the beginning. About that: in 2018, I spoke on the phone with a DMV clerk who had 30 years of experience. Her name was Robin, and she was based in Sacramento where these plates are all made. I asked her what was going to happen when we reached 9ZZZ999, and she told me that she didn't know, but that all of the "9" series plates had already been manufactured. That was in 2018! I'm almost certain the DMV actually knows what the next sequence will be by now, but that they're being coy. Robin's theory was that they would flip the characters, which I tend to believe as well. As an aside, I also own several samples, blanks, and prototypes that the DMV never released to the public (I bought them from collectors and estates of former DMV employees). I have downsized my collection by over 100 plates over the past year, but I still think I have too many. Oops. Keep up the great work!

My dad still has his Cali plates from back when he worked in LA in 1998, starting with 4 A. Belgium is doing the same thing with its license plates and we're at 2 now. There are also special letter designations like Q for trailers, O for oldtimers, M for motorbikes, T for taxis, Z for dealerships, and CD for diplomats that go in place of the first digit. A vanity plate here costs €1000.

Having bought a car recently and getting my plate two weeks ago, I can say that we’re actually already past HJ - my plate is HKV

The problem with reflective plates though is that they do not show up on surveillance cameras and traffic cameras sometimes and so you get this reflective material so when you have somebody doing a crime you can't get a proper plate and even computer enhancement doesn't work very well if at all. Run into that all the time with my job with security with license plates in the state I work at. If they didn't put the reflective stuff on any of the plates or made the plates not so shiny the cameras would be able to pick them up a lot better.

Hi Rob! When you're trying to demonstrate the retro-reflectivity of the plates, remember that it reflects the light back in the direction of the light source. That's why it works when you're sitting right behind your headlights at night. If you want to demonstrate it with your phone like that, put the light right next to the camera lens and turn the light on and off to show the difference.

I've seen a few of the new digital license plates and they are TERRIBLE! They're much less visible in any lighting condition, and in low light situations (like at dusk), they are virtually unreadable (even with the mandatory license plate light). I'd like to say that I had no idea what the lawmakers in Sacramento were thinking when they approved them, but I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of "Digital good!"

I really love this video, the geeking out, the humour of it -- from one license plate fan to another, thank you so much for turning this "on the spectrum" interest into something so entertaining!

I've been confused about license plates for a year now. This video answered all my questions and more. Thanks!

I remember being in England in the 80's and they were using a letter at the start followed by 3 digits and 3 letters. The cool thing was the prefix letter would change each year so you could tell what year it was issued.

In Mexico we used to have a very similar format (AAA-00-00) with the same 175 million combinations, though pickup trucks got their own (AA-00-000) for a total of 243 million license plates and every state has their own starting letter and art except for Mexico City which has their own format But now we've changed to AA-000-A and AA-0000-A respectively which gives you roughly 633 million combinations total for a country of 126 million so I think we're good for a while

Thanks! Great content! Happy to support.

Ever since I was a kid I've always liked to see different license plates and had fun on summer road trips seeing different states designs. The blue with yellow writing was the first California plate I remember and also loved the Golden State design!

My favorite California license plate number is “2GAT123” - used in many Hollywood productions including Modern Family and Curb Your Enthusiasm. That plate number is unassigned in my jurisdiction and I’ve considered paying the vanity fee to get it, but honestly it’s a very obscure reference that (by design) won’t be recognized as anything out of the ordinary by nearly everyone

The sticker registration is very interesting! Never knew even license plates were taken for the war, they must be very rare nowadays

Rob, you should check out license plates in Delaware. They have a unique history. Delaware still issues porcelain license plates. License plate numbers can be passed down between generations and vehicles. I've had two vehicles with the same plate number. Plate numbers can also be sold between individuals. Some low-digit plates sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Numbers 1 & 2 are reserved for the Governor and Lieutenant Governor. Check out The Delaware 3000 for more information.

Thank you for the research and the education. Learned a bunch.

This guys videos are better than anything TV could produce in the same category!

Now I'm curious about the history of license plates across Canada. We've had the standard US shape in Ontario since at least the 40's.

LOVE this!! My family has been playing "The License Plate Game" for years in CA - keeping track of the most current plate we see and who can get "Leader" status. We've predicted the 7s to 8s to 9s, very fun! FYI our current clubhouse leader is 9HKK, so that beats your J! Thanks for the awesome reporting - Yes, you are a real News Guy!

This video is so informative! I learned a lot about the topic. Thanks for sharing!

The simple solution some other states use is mixing up the letters and numbers. That takes the fields from 10 possibilities for numbers or 26 possibilities for letters to about 30 possibilities for each space when removing numbers and letters that look similar.

I've also wondered what the next CA license plate pattern would be, even though I've been living here in Utah, where you used to, for all of my life but 2 years (GA otherwise). I've noticed the few CA vehicles around and that heightening start number over the decades. Cool video, thanks!

The first personalized license plates were Amateur Radio Call Letter plates that have been around since the '50's as I remember

Thanks for all your great videos road guy rob! :D

Great Video. Love the history of the CALIF plates. The CA commercial plates, which are also issued to regular pickup trucks, just experienced the same thing of running out of combinations a few years ago. They went from 1A12345 to 54321A1. Essentially just flipping the order. They will probably do the same with the current plates for cars and go from 9ZZZ999 to 999ZZZ9 just like you mentioned at the end of the video. The sunrise plate was also my favorite. Great video again!

You know it's going to be a good week when Rob releases a video and it's a Monday morning. ❤

Haha.. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Jack Mendenhall's museum.. Jack was a hoot! Lol I live right down the road use to take my 34 Ford to the "Gas-up" every year back in the late nineties. Good times! Thank you for the video!

You seem so happy when presenting! It's almost contagious

Doug DeMuro would've been a good person for this video

I was a teenager in California but n the 90s, and after flipping coasts a couple times now live in Nevada. I see 8/9 series California plates regularly, and it shocks me after seeing only 1s as a kid. Makes me feel so old.

The barcode wouldn’t work because one of the many great uses of license plates is the ability to read the numbers and write them down in case there’s a crime and the car is leaving the scene. Or whatever other reason you might need to remember a plate

This may be the happiest "The End Is Near" sign wielding person I've ever seen. Happy to see happy people in California. With all the current problems staying happy is hard. Glad you're doing something you enjoy.

Iceland has already gone through something similar. When the new plates were introduced in the 90's, they consisted of 2 letters and 3 numbers (AA 111). Around 2008 we ran out of combinations, so the combination was changed to 3 letters and 2 numbers (AA A11).

Thanks for providing such great content, Rob!

I'm in my 40s now... but when I was a kid my brother and I would play a game on "spotting the next sequence" I think we started at 2U. There was always a sense of excitement when we spotted our first 3A, 4A etc... I've continued this game w my kids now and it keeps them somewhat engaged when driving around. Will be exciting to look for whatever the new sequence will be....

In France we had a somewhat similar situation maybe 15 years ago. For decades the license plates were formatted 111-AAA-NN, where NN was the number of the département (sort of equivalent to a county in US terms) in which the vehicle was registered. I believe the original idea had something to do with road tax, but in any case that was the system in place for 60 years or so. It meant that if you moved from one département to another - for example, from Paris city (75) to Versailles (78) out in the suburbs, you had to re-register the car at your new address, get a new plate number, and have new plates made up and put on. A huge hassle, on top of all the other hassles of moving. Eventually it got to be that certain départements were running out of plate numbers, so they moved to a national system where the département number was no longer a part of the registration, formatted AA-111-AA. Now the number stays with the vehicle until it's exported or scrapped; if you sell the car or change your address you only have to update the registration. Of course, certain people still wanted to have their département on their plates so it's still there, just as a sticker instead of as part of the plate number.

When I lived in California I was a compulsive license plate reader, always watching for the next leading number. I can almost guarantee that they'll do the same thing that they did with truck license plates after they went past the "9" in front and just swap it around. Truck plates went to 00000A1 and I expect them to use 000AAA1 for the first new car plate. But they could go on for about four more years if they used "0" in front, which for some reason they don't do.

I was able to keep the blue plate from my first car. It's one of those 999ZZZ pattern plates. And I still remember the plate number that was on our family's 1977 Econoline, also in the same pattern. We also kept the plate from the last car we drove out of California in 1992, which started with 2R. That was replaced with a Wisconsin collector series plate when we arrived here. Regular Wisconsin plates are now following the ZZZ9999 (three letters and four digits) pattern, with new plates starting with A right now.

What a great video bruh!!! So much interesting info I didn't know!

Here in Brazil there was a similar problem (well... not for Brazil but for Argentina that had cars from AAA 001 to ZZZ 999) where we used the AAA-9999 serialization. When Mercosur decided to unify the license plates we swapped to AAA0A00, flipping the second number to its corresponding character, this made the system go from 175M plates up to 456M without the need of changing all plates at once

I’ve always wondered if we would run out license plate numbers, phone numbers and social security numbers.

I know it's a small thing, but the animation of the license plate numbers ticking up was really nice. That officer interaction was top notch also, kudos to him. Great video as always man, keep up the good work!

Still have my front CA. plate from my 1983 Toyota pickup, 2G35936. The truck is long gone, but the plate lives on as a wall decoration.

Keep up the good work! They ran out of commercial vehicle plate sequences in 2007 and had to reverse it. 9z99999 went to 99999z9. The bar code in lieu of numbers/letters will work out 'just fine'. " Cop: Did you get the plate of the guy who hit you??? Victim: Sure did, it was a white sedan with plate little line, big line, big line, medium line, little..." gotta love the ingenuity of the dmv

In Ontario, our government issued plates are a sequence of 4 letters and 3 numbers. This has been in place for the last 20?? years since the last sequence (3 numbers and 3 letters) ran out. Literally just yesterday I saw the first plate in this format to start with the letter D. I knew this day would happen. If you think the TN-shaped TN plate is weird, plates in the Northwest Territories are shaped like a polar bear.

Iceland ran out of its AA-123 series around 10 years ago. They subsequently introduced the current AAA-12 series. I wonder what they'll do next

In IL a plate is "surrendered" when the user doesn't renew or reregister after disposing a vehicle (sell, or junk) but doesn't acquire another vehicle. In some states you must turn it in and such it can be re-issued.

Love it! Thanks Rob!

The Province of British Columbia recently caught up to Cali sequences from the early 70's in the 2010's. Alberta just added an extra digit around the same time and has already gone through the A's and B's and is well through the C's. From an IT process standpoint, I think you've already called it on what Cali will do with swapping the sequence; starting it with a letter should take essentially zero change to the processes already in use, other than setting the system that tracks production of them to begin on "A". On a side note, I would be fascinated to see the actual pressing equipment in use in various jurisdictions.

One of my favorite things about your videos is how you show the ways in which these tiny inane bureaucratic decisions made by various government agencies ripple out over decades in our daily lives. So cool! Makes you care more about local government.

Did not expect a 15 minute video about license plates to be so entertaining!

Here in Texas license plates are formatted AAA-1111 (note the dash is actually a little Texas) My grandmother got a new car a year ago and it starts with RYG, we may have hit S by now.

Just to boost the algorithm a little bit, license plates in Bangkok, Thailand are in the 1กก1111 format, using 44 Thai alphabets instead of 26 Roman alphabets. Therefore, there would be 44^2 × 10^5 = 193,600,000 plates for Bangkok in theory, compared to 26^3 × 10^4 = 175,760,000 plates for California. Of course, certain letter combinations with "awkward" meanings such as ศพ (corpse) or ตด (fart)​ are omitted. Thanks for poking my nerdy bit, Rob!

My wife and I noticed that commercial vehicle plates (vans, trucks, etc. owned and run by businesses) have sequences that are all numbers with the exception of the second to last digit, which is a letter.

Very cool video, Rob. I love to nerd out on this stuff.

I love your videos! This one was really entertaining!

When I was a kid in the 1970's-1980's, you could tell what state a car was registered in by the colors of the license plates. Texas, my home state, was boring (black letters on white, unless you had a vanity plate, which had red, green, or blue letters depending on the year that the vanity plates were issued). But now, so many states have plates that have white backgrounds. My note to state DMV's: for the love of God,, choose a color other than white!!! 😢

We really appreciate the research you that you put into all your videos, to make them informative and interesting!

Wow, the production quality of this video is top-notch. Great job!

They'll have to start the back to the future barcode plates. 13:04 so glad this was included in the video!

My State (Victoria, Australia) went from Letter + Number in a XXX-123 Sequence to X1X 2X3 Sequence. Although as I understand the digitisation of the records means they know what plates have been surrenders (you get back the remaining part of your rego fee) so they can re-issue numbers if need be. They also skipped many sequences to prevent rude words so you won't for example have a POO-123 on your number plate.

My home state of Massachusetts, the first state to issue license plates, still uses six characters with some combination of 1-3 letters and 3-5 numbers. Passenger plates that aren’t specialty plates always start with a number and commercial plates always start with a letter. The last number in the plate is month of expiration: 1-9= January-September, 0= October. All vanity plates expire in November and all commercial plates expire in December. Finally, green number plates are still valid and there was only a rear plate in those cases.

I did my part several years ago and ordered the sequential black replica plates for my 3 cars. I get to keep them and move them to any new car I buy.

This was so interesting to watch! When you were on the Golden Gate Bridge I immediately thought about film permits. The reason being: I'm planning to visit several national parks for videos I plan to publish and am reaching out to all of them because I learned that film permits are required at certain parks. Hopefully I'll be able to film at each park without any interruptions.

My first California license plate, is hanging on my office wall. I was there only 5 months, and then decided it wasn't for me and moved home. The plate starts with a 2 and it was January 1990. I actually paid the "Non-operational fee" to keep the plate active for 5+ years after I left, figuring I'd be back at some point and could just pay the current year, and be good. Never happened. My second California license plate is also hanging on my office wall. It's a vanity plate, with Lake Tahoe background. Very cool! This was October 2008. My third California license plate....you guessed it, hanging on the office wall. Starts with a 6. It was acquired in July 2009 I just figured they would start with the alphabet and ZZZ999 when the 9's ran out. The big wonder is, not all those previous license plates are still valid and active (like my 3)...why not consider a "old plate number recycle"? That would be a lot of work...and if for some reason someone with the "old plate" decided to put it on a car....well now you got a problem. Fun video Rob!!

In my home state, we started at ZZZ-9999 and going backwards. Apparently it's because one of our vanity plate designs started with AAA-1111 and they didn't want to overlap with it or something along that line. Also some fun facts: 1. In Virginia it is still possible to see plates issued in the 70's on cars. There used to be a car in my neighborhood that had the Bicentennial plates from 1976 on their car until about a year ago. I also see the occasional 80s plate on a car or two here. 2. Our plates have been basically the same since the early 1970s, albeit with some font changes, serial changes, and some other minor things. The only major change was the font & serial change in 1993. 3.We have the highest % of people with custom plates, with over 20% of drivers having one, as you can get a custom plate for 15-25 dollars but it's added to your registration so it's yearly.

Been bugging me too, thanks for running the numbers for us!

Thanks for the great informative video! Having worked for the largest corporate fleet vehicle leasing company in North America, I have always been curious what would happen when the sequential order was reaching its limit in California. Maybe you can do another video sometime of a compilation of other states around the country too how had the same issues? Thanks again and producing these great videos!

That was actually hilarious. Very professional interaction between the both of you.

California is the only state (so far) to allow people to buy a peel-and-stick license plate from a certified vendor and use it in place of the metal plate. The advantage of this kind of plate is that when used on the front of your car it reduces aerodynamic drag, which save a little bit of gas or electricity.

Mexico is working on changing the license plates too. Years ago we went from three letters and four numbers, to 3 letters, 3 numbers and one final letter. The way I think it works is that a combination of three letters is assigned to each state, and from then now the final letter changes whenever they run out of combinations of the 6 other positions.

Where I live we ran out of license plate numbers a few years back, the old plates used to be formatted ABC-123 the new plates are ABC-1234. The old plates are still considered valid so you don't have to trade in your old ones.

In Oregon when they adopted the ABC 123 license plate the first letter also represented the month of expiration. Also the year tags were color coded for even odd years making a expired plate soooo easy to spot. In case your wondering the letter "I" and "O" were never used because of their confusion with the numbers "1" and "0". Follow the math here and that leaves 24 letters exactly meaning the letter "N" was then used for January through "Z" for December when they ran out a A-M combinations. Sadly when Oregon went ran out of those combinations and they went to 123 ABC they dumped the month designation.

I've wondered about this myself! I'm from the era where I grew up with the blue and Golden Sun white license plates, and it's wild that we've worked through all nine digits since then. If I had to bet, I'd bet they flip it like you conjectured.

Tennessee started to run out of plates a while back forcing them to update from a 6 digit plate to a 7 digit plate

I really like these videos. They feel like TV back in the 2000s.

Excellent video as always Rob, and as a lifelong Californian myself, I always thought the license plates were just a random sequence. But what I wish would would happen in 2027 when they runout, is a new license plate design, as I think it's been long overdue (has the current plates been the longest in use so far?). But what would probably actually happen, is they just flip it again...

Do they not reuse the combinations when a license plate is done being used? In Denmark we have a system of AB 12 345 and when someone sells their car they have to get a new license plate and hand in their old one, those are then free and can be issued once again.

It brings me great pride knowing a senator representing my hometown is partly responsible for what are plates look like. C-Town 925

"These older plates didn't really reflect at all..." They _did/do,_ actually, but just more diffusedly than spectrally.

In Maryland when you get rid of your car (sale, scrap, etc.) you have to return your plates to the MVA (our DMV equivalent) and I assumed that meant they could then re-assign those numbers and letters. I could be wrong, but could this not work? Or would it just lead to too many headaches with like mistaken identity, thinking plates are stolen, etc.?

better reporting than most news agencies

Ontario Canada uses a 6-digit plate, newer ones have 7 digits, and they always have letters, a crown, then numbers and we can get vanity plates also

I'm surprised California doesn't just do like most states and reuse registrations that have expired and been confirmed closed out (due to the vehicle being sold/transferred to another state/disposed of), instead of just continuing to go up. After a couple of years for a registration not being active in the system, most states release it back into the pool, thereby ensuring that they won't run out.

It is 2:55 AM in Phoenix AZ, I have class in a few hours, great video! It's interesting that California started with a number, WA (where my car is registered) uses the same number/letter sequence but in an AAA#### format that gives them more options before they run out. As far as I know we about midway into the C series.

Gotta say your editor brought that🔥. That folsom prison bit was good.

Thanks!

So frickin good! Rob you are a presentation master 🤣 Never thought I'd be so interested in DMV activities 🤣🤣🤣

sadly for barcode plates they need to be human readible for various reasons, mostly crime reporting.

A number of states use the ABC 1234 format with lettering that spell the initials of whoever the deputy register is at the particular DMV office and they vary city to city, county to county. Seems to work quite well

In Texas, my plastic-type sticker was stolen from my plate back in about 1984. I am so glad that Texas now has the yearly registration sticker INSIDE the vehicle. The plate number is printed on that sticker, so one cannot steal it and easily get away with using it on another vehicle.

I think the biggest detractor with the bar code plates would be the inability to give the plate number to police for witnesses of a crime. Of course, the easiest solution would be to just add another number/letter to the plate. North Carolina has used an 8 character plate since 1985, and the numbers are recycled back into the pool when a plate is returned, which is required when you remove insurance from a vehicle. For non-vanity plates, we use 3 letters, a dash, and 4 numbers. So, XXX-1111 is the format, with the dash being a part of the plate number, giving 8 characters. We do have some convoluted rules behind the format, though. For current plates, the second letter in the series is strictly A through M. Also, lead zeroes are never used in the serial number, nor are letters G, I, O, Q, or U. Likewise, the number 1000 isn't used, either. I can't find a reason why these restrictions were placed, however. Fun fact: North Carolina does allow the use of YoM (year of make) plates on a vehicle that is 35 years old or older. In my case, I could buy a North Carolina plate from 1978 and slap it on my El Camino. The only restriction is having a valid plate in the vehicle at all times, whether it's a standard issue or antique plate. Though, if you're spending the extra money on the antique plate, why not just show that instead?