The state being short of its current combination of registration plates and letters numbers, California plans to launch a new sequence of license plates for newly recorded vehicles from next year.
The threat of a trade war launched by President Trump’s prices played a role in the dilemma of the state license plate.
The standard automotive automotive license plates of California have a configuration of a number, followed by three letters, followed by three numbers, according to Ronald NGOBOC, spokesperson for the DMV.
The standard license plate, used to connect vehicles recorded to their owners, is issued to all passenger vehicles, including commercial engine vehicles, motorcycles, permanent trailers, trailer coaches and park trailers.
The first edition of this sequence began in 1980 with “1aaa000”. Different sequences were used in previous years.
The latest sequence should end in 2026 with the 9zzz99 final license plate, “due to the number of combinations available,” said Ongtoaboc.
The agency is currently treating license plates in the 9uba000-9ubz999 range, according to the DMV.
Once the state is short of this license plate sequence, the following sequence will be three figures, followed by three letters and a figure.
For example, it will look like “000aaa0”.
The state is short of the sequence of the 80s about a year earlier than expected, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Part of the reason why the State expects to lack the sequence so quickly is that the issue rate of new numbers of California increases faster than expected, the DMV told The Bee.
What quickly obtained newly recorded cars on the road is the fear that the Trump administration’s commercial wars clearly increase cars prices, which encourages motorists to buy new cars before the prices increased.
A recent report by California New Car Dealers Assn. found that new vehicle recordings increased by 8.3% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same era last year.
“The initial reports indicate an increase in purchases of new vehicles in the months of March and April in anticipation of the implementation of these prices, however, it remains to be seen if they will cause higher prices of vehicles,” said the report.
The analysis provides that the number of new vehicle records will fall due to the fluid nature of current trade policy negotiations.
The report indicated that the total number of registrations for the year 2025 should drop by 2.3% and reach around 1.71 million.
California Daily Newspapers
