Digital licence plates are about the dumbest idea I've ever seen. Even ignoring any security, hacking, or fraud issues, think of how much wear and tear a car gets on the road. Weather conditions, rocks and road debris, collisions--it would be so easy to break! If the casing gets cracked and then it rains or you go through a car wash, boom, your expensive tech is broken. And I'm sure vandals would love to break them for fun. The whole thing is a waste of money and materials.

I am from Europe and trying to decode the licence plate and guess where is the driver from is the best road trip game.

As a European, I've always been fascinated by the beautiful state representation and design philosophy of US liscense platea

So, as a plate collector I have several issues with this video: 1. Only safety issue about Identifying plate would be not put the same word across state's various plate offering. This can be easily solved by DMV. 2. I do not see any problems having same number or vanity in different states because all state names are clearly labeled on 95% Of US plates. Bigger problem is people cover up state names with plate bracket (Often dealer ads or other association). therefore, harder to identify the state by a regular person. This issue was completely overlooked on the video. 3. Optional plates are huge revenue source for state and respective organizations. Why not support a cause if you can afford. 4. Most plates nowadays goes through testing by state and law enforcements. Chance of them being unreadable is low. Although I believe standardization of fonts (one for embossed and anther for flat plates) across country would makes thing little easier. 5. Optional Plates are only reason to keep plate collecting interesting. Only US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico have multiple graphics plate. Fun to spot and collect (only apply to collectors lol). 6. Digital is a big NO NO as explained in other comments.

You missed why: all these special designs and vanity plates are HUGE revenue generators for the state DMV because they charge drivers extra for these options.

"Hey, you know this metal sheet that perfectly does its job of displaying a simple string of letters and numbers? How about we make this an expensive, fragile electronic gadget for no fucking reason"

I actually like the state specific plate system we have in the US. There’s such a variety of plates makes it interesting to drive and see the different designs.

Hey I am Austrian, just wanted to say, that you normally remember at least the country, state and City where a car is from also from quite a distance. Nevertheless if the police has to identify a car after a crash, or burnt out car how could they possibly do that with a digital plate?

Digital plates sound like a solution in search of a problem. License plates are exposed to the elements and often damaged during accidents. Who wants a fragile device to replace them? Never mind visibility and security issues.

I'm surprised your video didn't cover the 2016 case of a Mr Tartaro who thought it'd be a good idea to get the custom plate, "NULL" As it turned out, 'null' is what police around the country commonly input into their system when they're unable to find the plate number for crimes/tickets. Soon enough he ended up facing $12k+ in fines.

The stark contrast between plate designs is beneficial in the north east. When you’re in NY, orange plates are NY, blue is CT, yellow is Jersey, & white is PA. It helps in metro areas that encompass multiple states.

Don't fix something that doesn't need to be fixed. I've never heard anyone have a problem with license plates. People who like to collect cars don't want to have some stupid-looking box on the front or back of their car. But there is a problem with having the same tag on different design plates in the same state.

And yet cops and traffic cameras have absolutely no problem getting my license plate and giving me tickets

The eu plates arent standardised by size, they vary with country just look at the finnish plates against german ones. Also the numbering and lettering varies a lot from country to country. Ie: finnish plates use xxx-000 and estonian 000 xxx. The only real standard is the countrycode in the plates

5:08 Just a correction: Usually it‘s a random collection of letters and numbers (the letters always are first), but you can also choose your own registration, for example „XX 0000“ if still available in the county or city.

went into this defensive from the start. I love the variety we have here in the US, each state's plates are quickly recognizable (either as something you've seen many times before or clearly someone from hawaii or alaska or oregon trundling blindly around the middle of new england lol)

Having a digital license plate would be a boon for criminals. They could use a homemade digital plate where they could change the plate number and state with a touch of a button inside the vehicle, thus avoiding police who are looking for them.

European license plates are standardized for EU members and non-EU members. For example Republic of Moldova license plates are the same size with Romanian license plates. And a license plates in Romania looks for example like this: NT 01 ABC; where NT is the county where is isued from (in this case county of Neamț) and the numer is the order of issuing of letters.

Gotta love how it's all about criticizing vanity plates, and they don't talk to anyone about WHY people buy them in the first place.

Here in Argentina we have standardized license plates all over Mercosur, together with Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. One of the goals was to make it much easier to support OCR (optical character recognition) for multiple different processes, from automatic tolls to automatic recognition by police patrol cars (for instance, if a car was reported stolen). However I think it would have been nice if they had a little individuality, something that could allow us to identify easily what region within which country each car came from.

Arizona has over 50 different plate styles. Could you imagine if *every* state had that many? Literally over 2,500 different plates. One thing I'll never understand is why other states have cool designs with wolves on them, but somehow, some way, Minnesota doesn't. It's the only state where wolves have never been exterminated, it has the only natural wolves left in the lower 48, it has the International Wolf Center, and the basketball team is called the Timberwolves. Where the hell are our wolf plates?!

A screen for a license plate?!? What domkop though that would be a good idea? Screens are fragile and all too prone to breaking, and furthermore, they don't work without power. Screen plates would make it all too easy to do something illegal. They should just stick to metal plates, they last for decades without fail!

I just want to mention EU license plates are also customizable. There are some rules though, which probably depend on the country. So for example, czech plate has to have at most 8 alphanumeric characters, at least one number, cannot have the letters O, Q, W, G and CH (yes, it is a letter here) and cannot contain a banned word (there's a list).

I like the variety of license plates that makes each state's license plates unique. It's fun to look at them on the road. Canadian provinces also have a variety of designs.

It is true that you can get a myriad of special vanity plates but the vast majority of people just get the default plate the state offers which is usually very readable and understandable just based on the specific color scheme used for that state. I feel like this video kinda made a mountain out of a mole hill as this, to me, is kind of a non-issue. It was a good and interesting video, it's just I disagree that vanity plates cause any types of confusion with the exception for the most niche ones

Ever since we saw a “WHO DAT” plate at a parking lot, my family has been keeping a record of vanity plates.

My license plate has a silhouette of a surfer dude with an ocean sunset behind him. The rest of the world can keep their boring ass plates but back off mine lmao

As a federation, the states in both Mexico and the US are in charge of traffic rules, they also issue driver’s licenses which is the reason why there can’t be a bilateral agreement between the European Union and the US regarding driver’s license exchange, it would have to be between the EU and Texas, Arizona, New York, etc.

This seems like a problem unique to law enforcement and toll collectors. American values foster “uniqueness” and that’s reflected in our varieties of plates.

In South Africa, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal still use the apartheid era license plate system: 2-3 letter code denoting the town, and up to 5 numbers. The first few hundred numbers are reserved for government and vanity plates, and you can get 5 character personalised plates ending in province abbreviation. It's really cool because you can see exactly what towns the driver is from. CA and CAA for Cape Town, CFM for Somerset West, ND for Durban, etc. Other provinces use random alphanumeric generations over a provincial crest background. Very bland.

American license plates are cool, they have cool designs on them and I feel that’s cooler than just random numbers/letters on a white background. for example you can basically tell what state a car is registered in just by looking at the plate design.

I love the modern US's license plates, so much variety and sometimes the custom ones can be humorous

This is also the same in Canada where each province has there own license plate

.... I was going to say as a Floridian I'm very familiar with different state plates and can identify right away if a car is from our of state so I feel it'd be easier to identify a car that doesn't fit in the area (plus in Florida for example lots of the plates have the county of origin on the bottom that I can read several car lengths away)

I'm in Australia and there was an attempt to keep the combination unique and consistent country wide, even though each state issues their own. Initially all states used XAA999 style (the X was unique per state: ACT all start with Y; Queensland with N, O, P or Q) when those ran out things went in different ways. I know NSW changed to AA99AA combination, Queensland to 999AAA, WA added a seventh character. (I'm in Queensland so I don't know all the interstate combinations.) When it changed to 999AAA the first to be allocated was 000NAA through 999PZZ then it went to 000AAA through 999MZZ, then 000RAA through 999ZZZ. I'm sure there's gaps for reserved combinations etc. Around 000HAA it changed from green to maroon lettering to better reflect our state colour. Still on a white background. We currently have 999AA9 combination so the first after 999ZZZ was 000AA2 (last digit is never 0 or 1 to avoid confusing with O or I). After 999ZZ9 it'll be 000A2A, then after 999Z9Z it'll be 0002AA. It hasn't been announced what will come after 9999ZZ, I'm guessing either reuse what will be 70+ year old combinations by then or add a seventh character. The plate can either stay with the car or if you like it you can "customise" it for a small fee and move it between cars. I did this with my first plate, so I have a newer car with green plates. You can get it reprinted in different colours for a larger fee but I didn't do this. This fee is still lower than a chosen combination ("personalised"). I have heard of personalised plates being non-unique interstate but the state code is displayed, and since we only have 6 states and 2 mainland territories it's not a lot to search all the databases if required. The degree of personalisation is limited, font size and shape is consistent, it's just colour and decoration that is changeable.

The Hungarian license plates have changed from the 1st of July 2022 to the AA AA 123 format from the ABC-123 format, which has started in 1990. You can still see license plates from before joining the EU (e.g.: GVR-507, you can see the Hungarian flag and the standard stickers, from 2004 license plates starting with e.g.: JDA-140 are marked with the EU flag) and since there are no characters left and the old plates cannot be re-registered, they started with this new format. You can still keep your current plate until next years technical inspection.

How does allowing the same number plate with different backgrounds even work? Surely the identifier is still the text, but now it's the same text on multiple vehicles?

Every state I have had cars registered in have Aluminum plates not "galvanized steel", the UK also has plastic and metal plates produced by people other than the Government. Most of Europa also uses aluminum. Agree with you on all the specialty State plates as being confusing. Colorado qualifies for this in addition to Arizona. California has had so many vehicles they have through the years changed the alpha numeric combinations often and have added or gone back to a black plate with yellow lettering.

Digital plates are going to make it extremely hard to maintain. Your headlights go out and you need to fix it. Imagine what happens when the display on the back of your car goes out. Or, if it gets hit by a rock and it damages half of it. Unless there's bulletproof glass and a perpetual display that never goes out, it will be extremely hard to implement them.

When I got here in the US 5yrs ago, I find it cool whenever I see different plates from different states. It's fun. I'm learning what's the slogan for every state. I think that's unique. My home country is imitated it by just putting the name of the province ,no slogan or u cannot customize it tho.

wait,... Digital license plates? That is the most moronic solution to the problem! Other countries have solutions to this problem, just adopt one of those.

One thing I wish was standardized was a single plate law. I’m sick and tired of drilling holes and basically destroying cars to put front license plates that aren’t even enforced in Texas. It’s in the law but you know it’s not a serious one when dealerships can sell cars legally without front plates. Many people including myself have run without front plates for YEARS and have never been pulled over for it.

The EU does have a number plate directive, but it's optional for member states. Belgian plates are a lot narrower than French and German ones and are also coloured differently. Most European plates are black text on white plates (front and rear) but Belgian text is red and Dutch plates have yellow backgrounds. UK plates are white up front but yellow on the rear. Also, UK plates are usually plastic, while German ones are aluminium and others vary. The UK is additionally complex, the country code stripe is optional, but also the plate issuing isn't quite national, Great Britain and Northern Ireland have different plate types with different formats (currently AAA 0000 in NI and AA00 AAA in GB). Plates belong to the car in the UK though so while a new car in NI will always get an NI plate and one in GB will always get a GB plate (there is a geographic indicator in the plate for the place - county more or less - of issue), if a car from NI is sold to GB then it will keep its NI plate. The UK doesn't have vanity plates as such, in that you can have a personalised plate but it needs to be a valid plate of a standard format and it can't have an age indicator newer than the car you put it on. That means that the plate LA55 ABC might be a London (that's the L) plate from between September 2005 and March 2006 (that's the 55) or it might be a vanity plate fitted to any car made since September 2005 because the owner wanted that plate and was able to pay for it. The video showed a UK plate "LR33 TEE" which isn't valid, that would be a London plate issued between March and September 2033, so it won't be issued for another 11 years and it will never be legal to apply it to the Mini it is shown fitted to. This is a really common error in US film and TV depictions of the UK which weren't filmed in the UK (I'm talking to you Ugly Betty). Also, UK plates don't have a standard size, not only do certain cars have special oversize plates (Jaguar X Type and Rover 75 are a notable pair) but you also get different shapes (there is a special square format for older off roaders and a different rectangular one to fit Japanese grey imports). The size isn't governed by regulations directly, it's about the minimum amount of plate you need around the characters you have (character size and font is strictly regulated, but the government doesn't make the plates in the UK). Your plate may have 7 digits, but it might only have two if it was first issued a very long time ago, and it can have anything in between. Finally, UK trailers carry the plate of the tow car, the trailer isn't registered in its own right, and motorcycles have special small plates with smaller characters

Here in Australia we have a fairly standardised system for plates and each state can usually be identified by colour combination alone. NSW Black on Yellow, QLD Green on White, VIC Blue on Silver etc. We have custom plates but cost and rules keep them in low use and they're still pretty easily identified.

I know in our state, police have a little device that scans the plate from the patrol vehicle, which then alerts the officer of expired registration, if the vehicle was stolen, or has any wants or warrants. Thus, differences between states shouldn’t be an issue…

In Western Australia you can buy vanity plates in 12 colours, with a wide choice of letter/number colours, a choice of steel, Aluminium or plastic and 4 different dimensions/sizes. Plus special plates for your favourite sports team. Choice is good!

For being an expert, one of *TWO* "exceptions" at 3:33 is wrong. Oregon doesn't assign numbers randomly, it doesn't recycle old numbers. It assigns sequentially. For a long time, it was "AAA 001", three letters then three numbers. Once those were running out, they just reversed it and started over. "001 AAA". The numbers increment first, then the letters. so "998 AAA' then "999 AAA" then "000 AAB". They do repeat between the two series. So if there was an "ABC 123", they will issue a "123 ABC", but they won't just randomly reissue "ABC 123"> Like many states, though, we do have a dozen different "specialty" plates. They follow one of two patterns: "symbol on the left, four letters as the registration number" - all the "military veteran" and most "support your college" plates are like this, logo of branch of service (or other special symbol like purple heart" with four letters. The four letters are sequential among *ALL* of this type - so you might have a US Army plate "ABCD" followed by a "Share the road with bicycles" plate "ABCE" followed by an "Oregon State University" plate "ABCF". You won't have a "share the road" or "Oregon State University" with "ABCD" though. The symbol isn't part of the sequential registration. (I'm pretty sure they print these in batches, though, you wouldn't see three different 'series' in three sequential; you'd see ten "US Army", then twenty "Share the road", then fifteen "Oregon State University" or the like.) The second is "two letter designation vertically for this specialty plate type, followed by five number registration". One series is benefiting the arts, "Cultural Union", so they have "CU" vertically (C above U) then five digits - "CU 12345". Another series for "prevent wildfires" might have "SM 12345" The two-letter code *IS* part of the registration. (And each "special series" has a different two letter code. Some have so many that the five digits after aren't enough, so they've added extra two-letter codes for that series. (Notably one for Crater Lake - started as "CL", they ran through all 100,000, so added "CK", then "CA", then "CB". FFS, basic research and fact-checking please, especially when the "expert"'s claim to fame is "I'm the guy known for license plates on TikTok."

As a tag and title clerk for the state of Virginia, I would this quite interesting to learn the history and technicality’s of different states. See how I just know the forms and fees for different states for my job. Very cool!

I appreciate the uniqueness of USA license plates

The Australian states have different numbering formats but plates have a standard size and font. Vanity plates are as simple as a different colour and what’s written.

I'm from Norway, and we also have the blue rectangle, the blue rectangle means it's from a Schengen area, the EU star ring, means it's from the EU. So for me who is a Norwegian, we have the blue rectangle, but with the Norwegian flag since we're not in the EU, and our format is as follows: "XX 12345", but we can also customize the letters if we want.

Dang. Now I want a license plate that just reads, “NOPE” on it.

Everything comes down to money. Any question in the US, somewhere in the answer is money.

I like my vanity plate. I do not like the huge fee my state charges every year for its renewal. Sure, charge me to buy it, but why is the renewal more? I'm not getting a new plate every time. Yeah, they do it because they can.

One thing unmentioned is that in Germany, you can chose what second pair of letters and which numbers you want. For example if you live in Weimar, you could get a license that says WE ED 420

I don’t want standardized license plates. I love the differentiation and beauty of some plates. Makes things fun

In the UK, we have a white front and yellow back, both of which is high visibility for the extra degree of safety.

In the UK, the blue strip on the left of the plate with the EU symbol & GB was optional even before Brexit. It only really came in handy if you drove to the EU mainland and didnt want to slap on a big white oval country identifier sticker onto your car. Now the market for those stickers has picked up again as new car plates no longer come with that blue strip, meaning you have to display the sticker if you're driving on the EU mainland now.

I'm not from US but I always find customisable US license plate to be interesting. They can look pretty cool and reflects your interests/personality on your car, making it unique. However, the only problem I only just know from this video is the fact that they would allow you to have the same number & letters in the same state JUST BY HAVING DIFFERENT DESIGN??! That is definitely a mess and shouldn't have been allowed in the first place! I wonder how do they register it in their database or when a cop give you traffic citation, do they type in the number and made sure to select the correct design from 53 available designs? What if there are more designs in the future? Overall, I love the level of personalisation offered by US license plates. However they really should find a way to fix that mess I mentioned before while also keeping their authenticity.

In Germany you can choose the elements past the county code, as long as it follows the two letters followed by a string of numbers scheme. Many people put their initials and/or birthdates on there or the initials of their favorite sports team, I have my initials and my marriage date on there. This is somewhat the middle ground between random numbers and full vanity plates.

Europe, specifically UK has a lot of ANPR cameras so identifying plates are not an issue

0:23 In northeast Territories, Canada they got polar bear shaped licence plates That's "wildly" different lol Edit: 2:30 nvm he is holding one lmao

Here in Ontario, Canada our premier redesigned our licence plates. The design was cool but they were cheaply made and the letters could not be read from a glare at night so they were recalled. Either way, North American plates are all unique and have personality while still being practical. I like them more than boring European ones.

A few memorable plates I’ve seen: - “X” - “IH8 CATS” - “666” - “Johnny” - “Greece”

That's the beauty of USA. It's like 50 small countries with their own rules.

Germany: It's not always two letters in the middle. Sometimes it's one letter, that is occasionally used to distinguish different districts within a zone (for example one letter with longer numbers in the city and two letters with shorter numbers in the surroundings). Some big zones might even use three distinguishing letters. And those may not be offensive either (such as SA, SS, KZ, AH, HH etc. for obvious reasons).

For the police issue, maybe have a system that shows the tag number AND the design on the in car computer so the cop knows exactly what to look for.

As the men said in Canada and Mexico we have the same size, and for example in Mexico we also have a different one for each state, and it’s nice cause when you’re in a mall parking or something with a lot of cars you can see the different styles.

6:18 you have to also remember that ANPR is common aswell which makes it easy to find cars

Why American plates are so different in each state... per the US Constitution, the powers not given to Congress are reserved to the States. *which means, license plate design is reserved for each state.

You forgot the biggest part about European plates: they have been machine readable for years. Cameras have no issue deciphering them and this has been used for years for "section control". Which is what we use to check your average speed along a certain route, mostly tunnels with high accident rates. Also highway tolls can be digitally bought for a specific licence plate and the cameras will recognise it within seconds. And I don't know about the US, but our plates have lights and you are legally required to keep them clean and readable to ensure these systems work.

Mexico's system is that all plates in the country have standardized design elements and different states have specific blocks of letters, so that no two plates in the country have the same serial number.

Literally never had a problem with license plates lol

United States license plates are so cool idk I love how on each plate there’s a design that represents the state. Like a grizzly bear for Alaska and the Rocky Mountains for Colorado. It’s so unique and kinda cool to see in my opinion. I love going on roadtrips and finding different out of state plates

In France, we actually have 3 major system for license plates, actually only one can be obtained. - The "FNI" license plate system from 1951 to 2009 for all vehicles except some, it looks like : 1234 AB XX or 123 ABC XX, XX is the geographic code (96 numbers in continental France). - The "cyclomoteur" system, only for less than 50cc bikes, it was available from 2004 to 2016. Previously they don't need to be registered. It looks like A 123 B or AB 123 C. They aren't geographic indication. - The actual "SIV" since 2009 which replace quickly the old "FNI" by being required for all brand new vehicles and used one (as FNI) that change owner. It looks like AB-123-CD. They still a geographic indication code in the right blue band of the plate but it can be choose without restrictions of the owner's living place. This system is used for all vehicles since they no longer have special systems (like police, farm tractors, Paris firefighter...)

I live in Italy, and i would love to have a personalized license plate.

Is it really a mess though? I don’t think drivers are complaining.

Digital plates sounds like something out of grand thief auto or heist films, where you can easily change your license number when chased by police cars.

Interestingly issuing license plates in Germany and Austria is very similar (up to some point): License plates are issued by the local district (in some cases the (independent) city), regulated by federal law. Both types of license plates follow the same structure: One or two (in GER up to three) letters for you local area; followed by a combination of letters and numbers. In Germany you have one or two letters followed up by three or four numbers. The types of combinations is regulates by federal authority in GER, because independent cities and districts named after these cities share local codes in most cases. Within the allowed space you can choose a combination that has not been already taken. In Austria you can choose a almost individual combinations of four to seven letters and numbers. Reserving special a special combination will be charged with a fee of 200€ for the safety fond in AUT, but not in GER, because… License plates in Germany and Austria have the seal of the authority, showing the coat of arms of the local state/province (both are called »Bundesland« in German, but are translated differently because of different level of independence to the federal government). Both plates are white with black letters in the general case. And this is where the similarities end: The sticker for general inspection is on the rear plate in Germany, but on the front window of the car in Austria. Plates with green letters are for tax-freed vehicles (farming vehicles, emergency services,…) in Germany but for electrical vehicles in Austria. Electrical vehicles are marked with an additional letter »E« in Germany; additional letter »H« is for historic cars. Additional letters as stated by the federal law are _not_ part of the official number, but treated as anyways to avoid misunderstandings. Contrary, additional letters (like »H« for historic cars, »TX« for taxis,…) in Austria _are_ part of the official number, because this is developed more like a agreed convention of the local authorities. _&c. pp._

Thanks for making this informative and interesting video

You can also freak out and obsess about the backs of US Coins, quarters, being different.

Honestly I like the way the US handles the license plate system. It shows uniqueness between states and makes for a fun game to see where each car is from. The main argument is based on such a rare coincidence that really makes the argument a weak one. How often does a criminal steal a car with custom military vanity plates and drives it to a different state? I'm pretty sure most cops and all traffic cameras in the US can read the letters/numbers on the plate and run it through their system to see if it is stolen. In a world with so many issues, should we really take the time to complain over license plates?

A lot of the special plates are something you can buy while supporting a cause such as wildlife, cancer research ect. And you get a nice plate to show off. That is someyhing i wish we had in Europe

This month is the first month where our province no longer requires insurance decals on our licence plates (which we've had since 1971). Police vehicles have electronic readers that scan the numbers on our plates and bring up the current data. Parking companies use scanners in their pay-by-licence-number lots and spaces to locate violators. Other than eye-witnesses being able to say "Did you get the licence number?!", it seems that all we will need on our vehicles is a bar-code...

Must be “the price of freedom”

In not all European countries the codes are put back into circulation after the car that previously owned the code got demolished. That caused for example Belgium to change their system from ABC-123 format to 1-ABC-123, adding an extra character. And the Netherlands changed the amount of characters between hyphens, so from 12-BC-CD to B-123-CD. Also, the Netherlands doesn’t use vowels in their licence plates to avoid the chance that the randomized system spells out (curse)words.

As a Spanish, I can say that the license plates used here belong to one of the best vehicle registration systems in the world for its structure and classification: -For normal vehicles (cars, buses, trucks...) they use the "Alfanumérico Nacional" system (national alphanumeric), which consists of a combination of numbers and letters in the format NNNN LLL, where N is a serial number from 0000 to 9999, and L is a serial combination of letters starting with BBB and ending with ZZZ (omitting vowels, Ñ and Q). The colors and measurements are the European standard (white background and black characters) plus the "Eurobanda" (Euroband) on the left. -For special vehicles (tractors, cleaning vehicles, quads...) they use the same system, but with an E at the beginning belonging to "Especial" (special). The measures in this case are 280 x 200mm for the "Especial Alta" (high special) and 340 x 110mm for the "Especial Larga" (long special). Then, the colors are white for the background and red for the characters. -For trailers of more than 750 kg of MMA (maximum authorized mass) they use, again, the same system, but this time including the letter R in front belonging to "Remolque" (trailer). The measurements, again, are the European standard, and the color scheme is red for the background and black for the characters. Here I only show the most important systems of all, but it would take me a long time to name them all one by one, so I leave the link to a web page where each and every one of the systems are explained (use, measurements, colors, current status...) plus the old systems still in use (provincial numeric and alphanumeric, provincial special, provincial trailers...) matriculasdelmundo.com/espana.html

American tags have more iconic designs and artwork that make them more interesting than their bland European counterparts, not many people in the US would support standardization and are proud of their tags, vanity tags also bring in revenue for DMVs.

I would argue that the variety of plates in the US makes it easier to locate a particular vehicle. In the EU, it's harder to identify a car since the country code in the bottom right is relatively small and hard to see at a distance.

European here. Yes, compare to US license plates, there's some kind of standardization here, but things can get a bit, just a little bit, messy. I'm talking about Spain as that's where I live, but I've seen some vehicles from other countries and they have their own things as well. - The trailer of a truck usually has (or at least used to) have a different code from what vehicles usually have and its background color is red instead of white. - Although I don't know (I'm not looking it up) the exact measurements, some vans and minivans don't have the usual license plate in the back. The color and number&letters codes are the same, but instead of the usual long rectangular shape, it's closer to being a square, just because of the available room on the backdoor. - Some few cars have a smaller front license plate as well, but that's something really rarely seen nowadays. - And since a few years ago, taxis and some other public transport cars have a different back license plate. Their numbers and letters codes follow the same rules and are just the same as the one on the front, but their background color is blue instead of white and their letters and numbers are silver (kind of galvanized) as well as the frame. This way they are quite unreadable because both colors don't contrast well one another. I have no idea why they've done it, maybe to tell taxis from ubers and the like, but that's it.

I am from Germany and I would hate to have any other license plate type. It is so convenient to know where people come from, just from a license plate. And it’s a fun game to play on road trips.

In Nebraska, with the exception of our three largest counties (since 2002) license plates are county coded using a system based on how many cars were registered in the county in 1922, exactly 100 years ago. Talk about a mess!

Our plates in Europe are so extremely boring. I love all the great variety and even messiness of US plates. It gives me joy on every vacation and I have a collection of old plates from every state + DC 😁

In Europe vanity plates exist in a way. Sometimes you can personalise the randomised numbers for a small fee, if the chosen combination is not taken. In my country plates have two letters followed by four numbers. Some people chose their initials and their year of birth.

for years in South Africa, we've had the number plate format in this layout : AAA111:PR (with the last two digits referring to the provincial region the car was registered in). It remained in use till at least the early 2010s, when a new layout was designed (cuz the old one's combinations expired). While it's still legal to drive with the original license plates (and many still do), all new cars (or newly registered cars) have the current layout: AA-11-BB:PR (Again, last two digits refer to provincial region). as for the personalization of some plates, the font and layout stays mostly the same, but the background design can vary from province to province, depending on whether you want the standard blue-on-white look, or a more regionalized plate that is representative of the province.

Vanity plates are available in Europe, too. For example, in Croatia, two letter city abbreviation and Croatian coat of arms are mandatory, but the following three or four digits plus one or two letters can be replaced by anything (for a fee, of course). No fancy graphics, though.

I like the US plate system. I just can't stand states that require front plates. I go back and forth between Nevada and New York and I keep my cars registered in NV because no inspection and no front plates. I love Nevada's lack of micromanagement because I take care of my vehicles on my own.

Great video, while watching American videos, I’ve always wondered how you guys do to identify them. Lisa, you said that one can argue that in Europe we can also get confused because the license plates are too identical but I can assure you in real life it’s easier than what it looks like. For instance in France the last two numbers are the code that identifies the department (equivalent of county I think in the US) and wr have a sticker/ flag on the left for the region (state). The rest is just a unique series of letters and numbers made for the vehicle. 🚗

I kinda like the uniqueness of American plates. It's always fun to see where everyone's from, without having to squint.

Not sure if this has been mentioned already but in some places in europe, such as germany, you can get a customised license plate where you can decide which letters and digits are going to be on the plate, so it doesn't have to be a randomised or reused one (if a used car was bought), though they cost a bit more than normal license plates