The state of California is synonymous with car culture; it had nearly 13.2 million registered cars in 2023, the most of any state, and nearly twice as many as the number two state of Texas, which had a mere 7.4 million cars. Californians have a unique affinity for cars either by innate passion, or because those who don’t live in the Bay Area are virtually forced to rely on cars to get us around thanks to the fragmented nightmare that is our public transportation system.
California has so many cars, in fact, that it is running out of unique alphanumeric combinations for its standard-issue, non-commercial-issue license plates faster than initially anticipated. That doesn’t mean that California will suddenly stop issuing license plates or anything, in fact the solution is much less exciting than you may hope — the state will soon shuffle its license plate recipe up a bit. Currently, license plates have one number followed by three letters followed by three numbers. The new recipe will be three numbers followed by three letters followed by one number.
It has taken nearly 45 years to run out of combinations
In its current form, California’s license plate number recipe has been #XXX### for nearly 45 years, starting at license plate number 1AAA000 in 1980. According to a San Francisco Chronicle article published on Thursday, the most recently issued license plate numbers are currently falling in the 9UBA000 to 9UBZ999 range. The total number of potential combinations for the current California license plate orientation can provide over 158 million unique combinations, not considering any banned combinations.
Eventually, the final license plate issued under the current recipe will be issued as 9ZZZ999, and California Department of Motor Vehicles officials told The Sacramento Bee that it’s happening two years earlier than previously anticipated. Earlier DMV reports predicted that the state would run out of unique combinations in 2027, but new vehicle registrations increased more rapidly than originally anticipated. During 2023, California issued an 11.9% increase in new vehicle registrations over 2022, and that’s showing no signs of slowing down.
Once the state runs out of combinations using the current structure, it will simply reorder the same number of digits to be “numeral numeral numeral alpha alpha alpha numeral,” or 000AAA0. Now if only the state would redesign its boring standard issue plate — even bringing back the simple sunset plate design from the 1980s would be a welcomed change.
