California plans to start a new license plate sequence for newly registered vehicles starting next year due to a lack of current combinations of license plate numbers and letters.
The threat of a trade war caused by President Trump’s tariffs plays a role in the difficulties of state license plates.
According to DMV spokesman Ronald Ongtoaboc, a standard car license plate in California consists of one number, followed by three letters, followed by three letters, followed by three numbers.
Standard license plates used to connect registered vehicles to owners are issued to all passenger vehicles, including commercial vehicles, motorcycles, permanent trailers, trailer coaches, and park trailers.
The first edition of this sequence began in 1980 with “1AAA000.” Various sequences have been used in the past few years.
The latest sequence is a project that will end in 2026 with the final license plate 9ZZZ999 “because the number of available combinations is decreasing.”
The agency is currently processing license plates in the range of 9UBA000-9UBZ999, according to DMV.
When the state runs out of that license plate sequence, the next sequence is followed by three numbers, three letters and one number.
For example, it looks like “000AAA0”.
The state is gone about a year earlier than expected from the 1980s ERA sequence, Sacramento Bee reported.
Part of the reason why the nation expects to drive sequences away so quickly is that the rate of issuing new plate numbers for California is increasing more rapidly than originally expected, the DMV told The Bee.
Getting newly registered cars on the roads so fast is fearful that the Trump administration’s trade war will raise automobile prices at all and encourage new cars to buy before the expected price hike.
Recent reports from California’s new car dealer Assn. The first quarter of 2025 saw an 8.3% increase in new vehicle registrations compared to the same time last year.
“The initial report shows a surge in new vehicle purchases in March and April, in anticipation of the implementation of these tariffs, but it remains to be seen whether they will lead to an increase in vehicle prices,” the report states.
The analysis predicts that the number of new vehicle registrations will decrease due to the liquidity nature of current trade policy negotiations.
The report said the total number of registrations is expected to fall by 2.3% in 2025, reaching an estimated 1.71 million.
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