The New Change in Vehicle Registration Begins with N

Are you a fan of vehicle registrations? Do you enjoy noticing the letters and numbers on plates? Do you look for palindromic numbers or perhaps your birthday? Or maybe you simply enjoy seeing the repetition of a digit on that piece of metal that identifies all vehicles?

License plates can be quite intriguing, and if you enjoy 'playing with plates', you might have been waiting for a change, not so much in the numbers (which change daily), but in the first letter that follows. This past Monday, April 14, a significant change occurred. The General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) issued the first registration with the letter N, specifically 0000 NBB, assigned to a Seat Ibiza registered in Castellón. Interestingly, the last registration with M, 9999 MZZ, was also assigned on Monday to another Seat Ibiza from Castellón. In both cases, a leasing company owns the vehicles.

It has taken nearly 32 months to introduce a new consonant, which now appears in the first position of the three letters on the plate. The M has been with us for more than two and a half years. On September 2, 2022, the first vehicle with the letter M, 0000 MBB, was registered. Traffic estimates that the N will accompany us at least until 2027.

It was also in September, but in the year 2000, when the DGT inaugurated the new European registration format, based on a combination of four numbers and three letters, excluding vowels, CH, LL, Ñ, and Q. This model ended the system of provincial identifiers, which had been present on Spanish car plates since the beginning of motorisation. That coding had been in place since 1971 (1 or 2 letters of the province + 4 numbers + 1 or 2 letters), and had replaced the previous one (1 or 2 letters of the province + 6 numbers).

Once the current configuration was introduced, the letter B (from 0000 BBB to 9999 BZZ) remained on the plates for 25 months, slightly less than the average, which is about 29.5 months per letter. Below this average were C (23 months); D (20 months, the shortest duration); F (21 months); and K (28 months). Above the average were H (no less than 47 months); L (35 months); G (34 months); M (32 months); and J (31 months).

The evolution of the letters is a good indicator of the country's economic situation. Hence, those nearly four years of the letter H (between December 2010 and November 2014) coincided with the worst moment of the real estate and financial crisis that shook Spain between 2008 and 2014, hitting the pockets of millions of consumers and halting the purchase of new vehicles and thus registrations.

It is also possible to see the impact of the pandemic on new vehicle sales and how it slowed the evolution of registrations, which took longer than usual to change letters. This was the case with L, which remained on metal plates for 35 months, the second-longest period. It did so between October 2019 and September 2022, fully affected by the 2020 pandemic, with those three months of lockdown during which hardly any cars were sold, and its subsequent effects due to mobility restrictions.

Thus, from now on, we will see more and more registrations starting with the letter N, but there are still nine other letters left (we have already used half of the available consonants) to reach Z. Between that first B and this new N, nearly 25 years have passed, and Traffic estimates that another quarter of a century remains to exhaust the current system of four numbers and three letters.

The DGT wants to be prepared when that happens and have an idea of what the plates of the future will look like. Considering the annual assignment of new letters, Traffic foresees that the current plate model will be exhausted by 2053, in 28 years. To reach that date, they have taken into account the average annual registrations of the last decade: about 1.4 million vehicles, excluding so-called special vehicles (tractors or trailers) and mopeds.

In a forward-thinking move, DGT technicians have begun planning for that moment under a series of premises, the most important being that the new system allows for a high number of letter and number combinations so that, at a minimum, it takes another half-century (the duration of the current one) to exhaust.

It is also clear that future plates will continue to exclude internal geographic references to avoid provincial identifiers causing problems among certain autonomous communities or cities when buying and selling used cars. They will also close the door to the introduction of combinations with vowels to avoid offensive words, and to Ñ, the letter that most identifies us as a country. Its wavy line (known as a tilde) "is not contemplated in European regulations," argue the DGT.

In contrast, Traffic does consider the possibility of including additional information, such as the registration date, the European vehicle type, and even the environmental badge, which is now carried on a sticker on the upper right corner of the windshield.

DGT technicians are analysing the systems used in other countries, especially those that have recently changed models after exhausting the previous ones or deciding to modernise them. They have focused on the plates of European states with a larger vehicle fleet, such as Germany (53 million vehicles), France, or Italy (45 million). In these, alongside regional codes, there is space for a practically inexhaustible combination of letters and numbers.

Traffic does not rule out establishing in 2053 what would be two major innovations: electronic and personalised plates, which already operate in some countries. On paper, the former would be a physical plate but with a QR code or a microchip incorporated that would contain all sorts of information about the vehicle: registration date, environmental classification, whether it has passed the MOT, if the insurance is up to date, or if it has had any accidents, among other data.

Personalised plates, on the other hand, would have a name or word of free choice, but always including the basic and mandatory information established by the DGT at the time. However, they would come at a cost, as is the case in the United States, Hong Kong, Andorra, Dubai, or more recently Gibraltar, where there is the possibility of playing conveniently with letters and numbers in exchange for a payment that can exceed six thousand euros.

Spain is home to the world's largest manufacturer of license plates. It is the company Samar't, in Girona, which makes plates for around fifty countries. A few years ago, the company conducted a study that concluded that more than 50% of Spanish drivers would like to personalise their plates, and the percentage rose to 70% among young people.