How many license plate characters does your state have?

[STLmapboy]

How many characters are on your state/territory/province/country license plates? In Missouri there are 6.

[oscar]

How many characters are on your state/territory/province/country license plates? In Missouri there are 6.

In Virginia, non-personalized standard plates now have seven characters, not counting the state name and the insipid "Virginia is for Lovers" slogan. Some non-personalized specialty plates, like the "Great Seal" plates on both of my cars, have only six.

[STLmapboy]

How many characters are on your state/territory/province/country license plates? In Missouri there are 6.

In Virginia, non-personalized standard plates now have seven characters, not counting the state name and the insipid "Virginia is for Lovers" slogan. Some non-personalized specialty plates, like the "Great Seal" plates on both of my cars, have only six.

This question just applies for the base, non-personalized non-specialty plate.

[signalman]

New Jersey has 6. 7 characters was tried back in 1993, but were discontinued due to poor readability. Any 7 character plates that were issued were allowed to remain on the road so long as the registrant kept the registration active. They can still be spotted on occasion, but their numbers constantly decrease (obviously). 7 character personalized plates are a thing here too.

[index]

8 max for vanity plates in NC but standard plates have 7 characters.

[NWI_Irish96]

In Indiana, standard plates have 4-6 characters, specialty plates have 3-6, truck/trailer/fleet plates have 8, and personalized plates have 3-8

[-- US 175 --]

TX had 6 for several decades.  Only in recent years ( <10? ) has there been 7 character plates.

[CtrlAltDel]

California has 7 characters, a number followed by three letters and then three more numbers.

Or, to answer the question in another way, there are 40 characters that appear on California plates, the letters A to Z, the numbers 0 to 9, and four symbols: hearts, hands, stars, and plus signs.

[jp the roadgeek]

CT just went to 7.  Wish it were 7 when I was a kid, as my last name is 7 letters, and my mom's car (and later my first car) had a vanity plate with my last name sans 1 vowel.  Found out that another family member snagged the 7 letter version when the change was made (saw the plate one day on a car parked outside the supermarket, then ran into him a few weeks later and saw him driving said vehicle).  Standard issue went from 3 numbers/3 letters to 2 letters/5 numbers.

[GaryV]

Michigan standard plates have 7 characters and standard decorative plates have 6.

[kendancy66]

California has 7 characters, a number followed by three letters and then three more numbers.

Or, to answer the question in another way, there are 40 characters that appear on California plates, the letters A to Z, the numbers 0 to 9, and four symbols: hearts, hands, stars, and plus signs.

The CA gold on black plates that are not personalized have 6 digits.  One letter, then three numbers, another letter, and then one more number that always seems to be zero

[webny99]

Just one: the Statue of Liberty.

[US 89]

Utah has three standard issue plates. The two main ones feature a skier and Delicate Arch, and they have six characters in the format A12 3BC (changed from 123 ABC when the plates were redesigned in 2007). The third is a 5-character In God We Trust plate in format 1A2BC (recently changed from A123B), which is also the basis for a whole host of specialty plates.

Personalized variants of the two main plates can have up to 7 characters, while the others are still limited to 5.

[mrsman]

New Jersey has 6. 7 characters was tried back in 1993, but were discontinued due to poor readability. Any 7 character plates that were issued were allowed to remain on the road so long as the registrant kept the registration active. They can still be spotted on occasion, but their numbers constantly decrease (obviously). 7 character personalized plates are a thing here too.

Good for NJ.  6 is definitely more readable than 7, but the worry is that they may eventually run out of plate numbers by only doing 6 characters.

I suppose they ran out of numbers of the 123ABC and the ABC123 format, so now they are going with 4 letters and two numbers.  One pattern was ABC12D seems to have been exhausted and now are running A12BCD pattern.  We'll see how long this lasts before they have to go back to adopting 7 characters.


Two good resources for the license plate geeks:

https://www.licenseplates.cc/NJ

http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/usa/US_NJXX.html

And of course there is wikipedia.

[STLmapboy]

New Jersey has 6. 7 characters was tried back in 1993, but were discontinued due to poor readability. Any 7 character plates that were issued were allowed to remain on the road so long as the registrant kept the registration active. They can still be spotted on occasion, but their numbers constantly decrease (obviously). 7 character personalized plates are a thing here too.

Good for NJ.  6 is definitely more readable than 7, but the worry is that they may eventually run out of plate numbers by only doing 6 characters.

I suppose they ran out of numbers of the 123ABC and the ABC123 format, so now they are going with 4 letters and two numbers.  One pattern was ABC12D seems to have been exhausted and now are running A12BCD pattern.  We'll see how long this lasts before they have to go back to adopting 7 characters.


Two good resources for the license plate geeks:

https://www.licenseplates.cc/NJ

http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/usa/US_NJXX.html

And of course there is wikipedia.

NJ is one of the more populous states with 6-character. I can see Florida shifting to 7 in the next few years.

[jeffandnicole]

New Jersey has 6. 7 characters was tried back in 1993, but were discontinued due to poor readability. Any 7 character plates that were issued were allowed to remain on the road so long as the registrant kept the registration active. They can still be spotted on occasion, but their numbers constantly decrease (obviously). 7 character personalized plates are a thing here too.

Good for NJ.  6 is definitely more readable than 7, but the worry is that they may eventually run out of plate numbers by only doing 6 characters.

I suppose they ran out of numbers of the 123ABC and the ABC123 format, so now they are going with 4 letters and two numbers.  One pattern was ABC12D seems to have been exhausted and now are running A12BCD pattern.  We'll see how long this lasts before they have to go back to adopting 7 characters.


Two good resources for the license plate geeks:

https://www.licenseplates.cc/NJ

http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/usa/US_NJXX.html

And of course there is wikipedia.

NJ is one of the more populous states with 6-character. I can see Florida shifting to 7 in the next few years.

In theory, 6 characters gives you over 2.1 billion combinations. Not all of them will be used, by a longshot, but even 20% is 400 million tag numbers.

[hbelkins]

Six if you don't include the dash between the numbers and the letters; seven if you do include it.

[briantroutman]

Pennsylvania went to seven characters for its standard-issue passenger vehicle plates in the early '90s.

Previously, plates generally had six digits–going back to the late '50s. Up through the '70s, the combinations of digits and letters on Pennsylvania license plates were so varied as to seem virtually random to the casual observer (like X08-844 and 315-J57). But around 1979, PennDOT switched to a more standard ABC-123 format. These were issued sequentially from AAA-000 up until PennDOT reached ZZZ-999 in 1991, at which time the agency reset to AAA-0000. As of a few months ago, we're somewhere into the LKEs.

[frankenroad]

6 is definitely more readable than 7, but the worry is that they may eventually run out of plate numbers by only doing 6 characters.

Some states do a terrible job of putting seven characters on a plate (the 1993 NJ plates were among the worst).   It depends on the font chosen and the use of a space or hyphen (or the lack thereof).

Other states use a font and spacing such that 7 character plates are quite readable.  I present the current OH plate as a prime example.

[clong]

Alabama is 7. County number (alphabetically other than 1 (Jefferson County - Birmingham), 2 (Mobile County - Mobile) and 3 (Montgomery County - Montgomery) followed by 2 letters followed by 3-4 numbers (depending on the number of county digits) to total 7 characters. The 3 counties were the 3 most populous at the time the system was put in place.

[NJRoadfan]

Two good resources for the license plate geeks:

https://www.licenseplates.cc/NJ

http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/usa/US_NJXX.html

NJ specific: http://njplates.moini.net/

NJ has since switched to 3M's digitally printed plates and use the same font that many other states with 7 character issues use (like GA and AL). They could try 7 digit plates in the future again if they wanted to.

[STLmapboy]

6 is definitely more readable than 7, but the worry is that they may eventually run out of plate numbers by only doing 6 characters.

Some states do a terrible job of putting seven characters on a plate (the 1993 NJ plates were among the worst).   It depends on the font chosen and the use of a space or hyphen (or the lack thereof).

Other states use a font and spacing such that 7 character plates are quite readable.  I present the current OH plate as a prime example.

Georgia's pretty bad. Someone in the NC thread mentioned that North Carolina's looks fine, and I'll have to concur.

[jakeroot]

Washington State uses 7 characters (AAA0000). These came into effect in 2010, after the previous 000-AAA plates ran out (after switching from AAA-000). Washington does not seem keen on mixing up letters and numbers, prefering to keep them together. The only exception are non-passenger vehicles, which use the A00000A format and have since 1995. To the best of my knowledge, WA has always allows seven digit custom plates. The characters are centered on the plate.

British Columbia uses six characters (AA0 00A), after switching from 000 AAA (introduced in the early 2000s, succeeding AAA 000). Couple reasons instead of moving to seven characters: the font is too large to allow seven characters (smaller font might be harder to read); computer systems are heavily tied to six characters; as well, the current plate design has the BC flag in the centre and a redesign would be necessary.

[DandyDan]

Iowa has 6 characters on a standard license plate. Personalized plates can have 7 on the standard plate and the blackout plate. I believe it may also hold for the new Flying Our Colors plate and the college plates as well. Some specialty plates only have 5 characters, such as the ones that go to support the DNR.

[cjk374]

In Louisiana, license plates on cars have 6 characters. All other standard plates (trucks, trailers, RVs, buses, taxis, etc.) use 7 characters (a letter followed by 6 numbers).