A goodbye to license plates? Well, kind of. California has announced that they are fast approaching the end of their allotted numbers for car license plates in the state. California has long been the standard for the lawmakers in the United States. Their laws and regulations have influenced how the rest of the country operates. Their logistical systems are the standard and are often adopted by many other states in America. So one must ask where this is all coming from? How is it possible that they have run out of license plate numbers?
How did California run out of license plate numbers for its drivers?
The system that they currently use in California has had some thought put into it. In the current system, rolled out in 1980, they use a series of one number, three letters, and three numbers. At the time the DMV had some predictions as to when the numbers might run out, however their predictions proved to be a little ambitious to say the least.
The system experienced a surge in registrations in the decades that followed. Nobody back in 1980, the height of the cold war we might add, could have imagined that the car would become so easily accessible to the average working man. What the world experienced in the decades that followed was a insane amount of innovation and creativity in the mobility sector in particular.
That resulted in a serious underestimation by the DMV in California. The amount of possible combinations of license plate numbers was a number that they could calculate, even back in 1980. However the DMV has stated that those particular amount of combination of numbers and letters are coming to an end. The question then becomes, what do they do next?
What is the next solution for the drivers of California?
The thing about this is, we have no need to worry. The California DMV have already thought ahead and their solution might have you surprised. Perhaps by the sheer simplicity, or some would say laziness, of the proposed solution. California’s solution is to simply reverse the order that the numbers and letters appear. So now the plates will have three numbers, three letters, and one number.
A simple yet obvious solution. The mathematical possibilities of combinations available to the DMV are endless. The ever growing car market has given many people the opportunity to own a car that would have never had that chance in 1980 for instance. So the new system will come into effect most likely by the end of this year. Making the last of the previous license plate combination a collectors dream.
Imagine owning the last ever set of the current combination of numbers and letters on a California license plate? That is an item that anyone interested in the history of motoring in California would be interested in owning. And the Californians sure have the money to buy such an item. With the background color changing in the past as well as the letters color, the license plate has become a collectors dream.
Will the rest of the United States follow the example set in California?
The emergence of the EV out of other countries was surely not something the DMV could have foreseen. The old license plate system will most likely come to an end this year. Allowing the new generation of car owners to have significantly different license plates than lets say there parents had. In a state where aesthetic counts for a lot. The new license plates offer a different option to the drivers of California. Will the rest of the US follow the example set in California? If the evidence of the past is anything to go by, then yes they will.