American Discovers Every Registration Plate in Europe
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
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E for Spain comes from "España" - Spain in spanish. Sometimes those letters are from english versions of the names, but sometimes they are taken from native version of the name. :)
About 30 years ago Finland changed to FIN from SF (Suomi, Finland)...
On Finland all cars (truck - semis, taxis, etc) have same kind plates. Only difference is military vehicles and of course plates for embassies.
And denying further customisation is because most of european countries requires plates to be machine readable for speed cameras, parking garages etc...
Ahhh the E makes perfect sense now, I knew España 🇪🇸 but failed to think of it in that moment. Great information on everything, thank You 🎉
It's the same with the D for Germany (Deutschland)
Irish system changed in the 1980’s as we previously used the British style one and were running out of numbers to use and would have had to go to the British government for renewal.
@@OscarOSullivanwhy Ireland needs so many numbers on this Plate? What are they meaning
I'm surprised that Austria uses A and not O (or Ö). Which meant that Albania & Andorra couldn't have A.
On Polish license plate that sticker in the middle means that this plate is legal, and it's been legalized by Polish DMV. When this sticker will fall, or will get damaged or destroyed, plate has to be legalize again.
BTW , Poland have 2 sets official plates , those in video and black with white print ... but those second will be valid to 31.12.2023 .
In the UK we have white plates up front and yellow at the back. They are both reflective as a safety measure, but the rear yellow plate reflects brighter.
Ah thanks, I thought so. I was waiting for the yellow UK plate.
The 1st to letters on the UK plate shows where the vehicle was 1st registered the two numbers in the middle will shows the year of the vehicle was registered. For example from March 2023 is 23 and from September 2023 is 73 where these numbers change every 6months. This rule does not count on a private plate.
Some UK plates used to have EU blue stripe as well, didnt they?
@@MatoBuci Yes, the UK was in the middle of a slow transitioning process to EU plates when they decided to rebuild their empire.
@@MatoBuciYes but they were an option but mandatory if the vehicle taken was onto the "continent"
The upper seal on the German plate is the TÜV Plakette, telling you when the mandatory vehicle inspection is due.
And is aligned with the 12o clock position on the clock face, meaning the number in the 12 o clock is the due month.
Also there are six different colors, alternating every six years, eg orange like in the video is 2025 and 2031 and 2037... and so on. Next colour will be blue (2026), then yellow (2027), then brown, then pink, then green (2030). Then Orange again and so on.
Also there are about 800 different local shorts (the first letter/letters on the left side, from "A" (Augsburg) via eg "MTK" (Main-Taunus-Kreis) (roughly in the middle of the table) to "ZZ" (Burgenlandkreis), plus some special shorts for Administration etc.
It also should be mentioned that the TÜV Plakette is only shown on the rear license plate.
@@vophatechnicus stimmt hab ich glatt vergessen zu schreiben
@@Hartmut-oo5ts Interesting, similar colour sistem is used in Spain,only not on the plate but on a sticker put inside of the windshield
And just for completeness. The lower seal that you will find in front and back is an actual official seal that gets stuck on by an officer of the registration agency (like the DMV, the agency is based on the Kreis which like County or city).
They are tamper proof, so you cannot peel them of and stick them to another plate. This seal is what makes the license plate an actual official document.
In the Netherlands we have multiple colours for the registration plates, dependent on what the purpose is for the car. Like the taxis, they have a blue plate with black letters and no NL logo.
You also have 'trading' plates, thats for car dealerships. They are green and have black letters, and also no NL logo
.
And you also have export plates, for exporting your car out of the Netherlands, they are white, have black letters and no NL logo
And also fun fact: The first letter in the plate tells you what type of verhicle you have.
The V and B are for heavy and light trucks.
The D and F are for mopeds
The W are for trailers (max load more than 750kg)
but is the max load under 750kg, you can have a white plate with black letters and with the cobination of your car
The O is for semi-trailers of a heavy truck
The M is for motorcyles
The T is for a tractor
And the L is for a trailer from a tractor
And the rest is for normal cars.
And some combinations are forbidden, for instance: Swearing words, and political parties.
And before January 1st 1978 the plates were blue and had white letters.
Also a thing: If your verhicle doesn't have an NL logo and you go outside of the Netherlands, you need to have a sticker on you verhicle with NL on it
Southern neighboor here. Cool to know the letters have meaning as well! We have similar down here! Will pay more attention to it
And the plates are yellow, because of DAF. "That had to do with the old DAF cars that had a reversible geardrive, so they could go forward as fast as backwards"
We have in the Netherland sometimes small numbers between de letter and number groups for example 1 or 2 or 3
Thats for when you lost your papers or your plates get stolen then you get een new licence plate wit a small 1 for the first time exetera
Also in the Netherlands we have 'special' license plates for the royal house that start with AA and for foreign diplomats (embassy) they have the Corps Diplomatique license plate starting with /have in it 'CD'.
Furthermore foreign military that can't get a NATO plate have a plate with GN in it.
Maybe it has changed a bit, have been out of the country for 10 years now. 😉
And of course the blue licenceplates for oldtimers
Hello Ian, It should be noted that the majority of license plates in the EU are covered with retro-reflective material, with a white background, for better visibility, especially when parked on the side of the road. This is the reason why almost all of them are white. stay safe
And they light up prety well for camera's and infrared flashes 😂
Yellow has the same characteristics
In Slovakia the electric cars license plates have a green/bluish background
The reflective material has different purpose. It reflects the laser beam which comes from the speed camera.
The craziest thing in US is the tinted plate covers glass, making a plate that is nearly impossible to read...
Unlike the US, in Europe any vehicle that can legally drive on public road need to have a registration. So farming equipment like tractors and harvesters will be registered.
Not sure if this applies to all countries, but at least most of them have this.
Same in Australia
This includes military vehicles like tanks, which in germany have special licence plates. No eu stripe, german flag instead and a y as letter since its not used for any city (nato plates use x in germany) after tgat an almost random number code with up to 6 digits, meant to not make series of numbers recognisable
Including fork lift trucks, dumper trucks etc. Any vehicle that at anytime is used on the public road. 👍
Landwirtschaftliche Nutzmaschinen haben in Deutschland 🇩🇪 grüne Beschriftung auf weißem Grund, da diese anders besteuert werden…
Ähnlich wie in Dänemark 🇩🇰 dort haben Firmenfahrzeuge die ersten 2 Buchstaben auf rotem Grund und der Rest ist ein weißes Nummernschild 😮
Yes,also the vehicles without a license plate wich cannot be identified to have the fine sent by post office,will have the fine sent directly to the vehicle by a drone or grenade launcher. It happened to many russian tanks.
Fun fact: Countries that use the cyrillic alphabet (Bulgaria, as well as much of the former Soviet Union) used to have cyrillic letters on their number plates. This is no longer the case, but they only use letters that exist both in the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabet: A B C E H K M O P T X Y and possibly I (even if some of these letters only look the same but mean something else in Cyrillic, for example the Cyrillic letter "P" really is a R.)
I believe the same principle also applies to Greek plates, only in this case in reference to the Greek alphabet.
@@gbartosz83 the country code has always been in Latin letters. I am talking about the actual registration code. Other than the G in the small "BG", you won't find any G on a Bulgarian plate. Likewise, Russian plates will have no R, U, or S besides the small "RUS"
Same also applies to Ukraine!
The Dutch license plates at #08:26 indicate the details of the car, from there they can check who the owner is. this Dutch license plate belongs to a BMW 520I from 2022 and has an MOT until 2026, then it must be inspected. Via ''kentekencheck'' (licenseplate check) you can check what kind of car it is (just NOT the owner) This is possible for every Dutch registered vehicle.
French here. The second strip is for the number of the department you're from (95 is a department around Paris) and the name of your region above it (Normandy, and so on).
Also the UK has Black-on-yellow plates, but only in the rear. (And no, Spain doesn't have the "E" because of Sweden, but because of España)
For the Czech plates - the upper (red) seal is for the due date of the technical inspection, just like in Germany. The lower (green) seal is for the emission inspection. However, this one is not given anymore, so this is outdated.
For the Slovak plates - they have just started new system with a different font (like the German and Hungarian one) this year. Therefore, the plate shown in the video is not given anymore, but you can still see lots of vehicles with the old plates.
For the plate colors - Luxembourg and the Netherlands have both (front and rear) plates yellow, and the UK plates are white in the front and yellow in the back.
As you have noticed in the video, some countries have some letters "incomplete" and some with odd shapes, especially Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Netherlands, maybe some others. That is to make it harder to alter the plate number.
I think in Slovakia you can still choose ( in some regions ) old style of plates, if there are some left. For example in Košice, you can still get it until the last one is issued. So the last that will be issued is KE 999 ZZ.
In Slovakia, only number that is incomplete is 0, so that the cameras can distinguish O from 0.
Also with the new style of plates you can customize any letter so it can spell anything you want. With old style of plates you could only change the last part of plate. So the first letters of specific region would stay the same no matter what. So it was easier to know from which region each car was, now you can't tell.
UK plates used to have GB and the blue flash, but the government re-registered it as UK with the United Nations. This was not forced by the EU as some believe, but is intended to include Northern Ireland. Electric vehicles may display a green flash where the blue one used to be. Area of first registration and the year are coded into the character combination.
Interesting fact is that in some European countries, one, two or sometimes even three characters do refer to the city where the car is registered. A few examples: the "S" on the Austrian license plate refers to "Salzburg", the "BZ" on the right hand side of the Italian license plate refers to "Bolzano" and the "LJ" on the Slovenian license plate refers to "Ljubljana".
In France we have the department on the plate, i believe 01 to 98 and then three digit ones are oversears territories.
And the one to three letters on the left on German plates are for that purpose as well. In the video, RA is for Rastatt
KE for Košice in Slovakia 🙂
The number to the right on the russian plate is also an indication to where the car is registered. [78] is St:Petersburg, if I remember correctly.
edit: [177] is Moscow I think.
Same for Romania,the first 2 letters indicate one of the 40 regional departaments of Romania, in this case BN stands for Bistrița Năsăud
Few facts for polish license plates:
Before we used to have black plates with white letters/numbers, similar to Liechtenstein.
We also have a special yellow license plate with additional symbol of sillhuette/outline of 1920's car. Those are given for vintage or valuable historically cars. They also let you drive through clean air zones where vehicles with combustion engines are banned, as well as different taxes/insurance requirements. Historical importance means that either that specific car was important, like owned by someone famous, or that the model of said car was important - lile 1st gen Prius for popularizing hybrids. There are various laws that also dictate how old car needs to be or how extensive proof of importance of the car you must show to the officials.
As a Swede You saw plenty of black plated cars coming to the south of Sweden during spring and summer with Fiat 126 and the odd Wartburg's.
Denmark also had white letters on black and yellow/orange for vehicles registered as lorries and I've also seen green ones
Austria also had black plates until the 1990s.
Before we Dutch had the yellow plates, we had dark blue plates like Poland. In 1977 we went to Poland in our Fiat 124 station car, green, with our normal very dark blue plates and no NL sticker on the back of the car. On our was back, we visited our family near Dresden. During these few days there, our car was parked behind the house, next to a public promenade. On one of the mornings, my father noticed the word " Polenschwein" on his Fiat, written in the dust on the car ( we had been to Masuria in Poland). The writer probably thought that a Fiat with a very dark blue licence plate must have been a Polish car.....but it was a normal Fiat and not a Polski Fiat and the Dutch plate was not the same as a Polish one. The Netherlands also had a lighter blue licence plate for a few years.
We also have black on green for electric vehicles, white on blue for diplomats, red on white for temporary plates, green on white for manufacturer/dealer plates.
The Portuguese plate is represented by the newest simplified design. Previously it had a yellow bar on the right side with the month and year of vehicle registration.
It's important to note some countries issue the plate to the car and others to the owner.
In countries that issue them to the owner you may carry the plate to your newer car.
Hello Ian, On the french plate on right, you have a number who correspond to "department" origin. In your exemple, the number 95 correspond to "Val d'Oise". On the top of this number, you have the region "ile de France" or "isle of France" who surround Paris. Thank you for your quality video.
Yep ! And my plate has a Limousin leaf and 87 !
@@572Btriodeincroyable… je suis originaire du département à côte. Le monde est petit ^^
On peut aussi préciser que en France sur l'ancien système les plaques arrière était jaune, et qu'il existe pas d'autres format de plaques actuellement en figueur hormis les plaques diplomatiques sur font rouge dont je n'ai toujours pas compris l'utilité. Et l'armée qui est à part.
Same for Russia and I believe Kazakhstan.
For some clarity to non-french people who cares, France is divided in regions (13 for the mainland and 11 for territories all over the globe) each regions are divided in severals departments. There was 22 regions in mainland before, but in 2014 laws changed (2015 for application). And we are allowed to choose what location we prefer. I'm in the north east of France (so Grand Est/51) but I've choosed Bretagne/35 for love to it. It's our little vanity right! It's like to have a California plate in Colorado!
There are also very small ways to customise plates and stay legal. We can play with the shade of the blue sides as far it's blue. And there are 3 legal police fonts. You can also find black plates with the standard scheme of letters and number, without blue EU and location stripes, but it's for collection registered vehicules (more than 30 years).
Et bonjour à mes compatriotes abonnés à cette chaine! ;)
Additional mentions to what you found in that article :
Bulgaria doesn't allow custom plates but you'll still see custom registrations on expensive cars, like the mafia bosses' Maybachs.
France doesn't allow custom plates neither, but you register the car online and registration numbers are sequentials (so you see the number available and know what's available next), some owners wait for months and years to register with a cool number (like an AC Cobra 289 with AC-289-**, true story)
Luxemburg had different formats that you can still get (on a waitlist) or inherit. They are usually formed of just 5 or 4 numbers and convey you're a true Luxemburger.
Romania allows for custom plates but they have to keep the County code and follow the standard format (digits and letters).
Many countries have marks for authenticity (3D stickers like in poland or pressed in metal like in Belgium), some countries have technical inspection stickers on plates (like Germany or Romania) and some have different looks depending of the region (like Slovenia I believe, as well as Austria, where the coat of arms on the plate is that of the Lander).
The right blue band on some of the registrations bears additional information and fun fact is that in France it's up to the owner what he wants to display there. France switched more than 10 years ago from a different format where Counties had a 2 or 3 digits code to identify where the car is registered and when the new system was announced it became national instead of local, loosing the County identifier. People were outraged and they hastely added that additional blue strip with the old identifier as well as the logo of the Region where the county is located. Since then, it's up to the owner to chose what County he wants to display.
But the drama started again when regions where reshaped and some counties were integrated in regions they didn't want to be associated with. The irony now is that owners can chose what to display, but the ones changing the region logo to the former region or using different symbols can be fined.
Hi Ian !!! Here in Norway one group of vehicles have green background colour too, and that is the utility vehicles with a total weight less than 3,5 tonnes and with no more than 3 seats. Cars like Pick-ups and Vans. These are taxed less than cars with more than 3 seats. Keep up the great work. Greetings from a frozen Norway!! 🙂
Also interesting: if Dutch plates get stolen, the replacement gets the same letter/number combination, but with a little 1 above the first dash to tell the two sets apart and allow for the original to be invalidated without creating a whole new registration. This comes in handy because the order of letter/number combinations indicates the build year. The first series was 2 letters, 2 numbers, 2 numbers. When those ran out, they switched to 2 numbers, 2 numbers, 2 letters. When all combinations of groups of 2 ran out, they switched to 2 numbers, 3 letters, 1 number, etc.
Some letter combinations are not allowed, such as abbreviations for political parties. Also C and Q are banned because they look too similar to the O. And AA as the first group is reserved for cars belonging to the royal family.
Before France changed to these plates, they had two digits for the departement where the car is registrated (75 for Paris, 68 for Haut Rhin, 06 for Marseille...). This was not possible anymore after the change. So they introduced the strip on the right with the departement number. You can choose, if you get that second strip or not.
Germany: the upper, colored sticker is the stamp for the biannual technical inspection (TÜV), the lower stamp is the seal of the Landkreis (something like "county") or of federal- or state authorities. The first 1 to 3 letters are for the Landkreis or Organisation, then one or two random letters and one to four digits. The federal or state organisations have their abbreviation ("Y" for Bundeswehr, "BP" for Bundespolizei, "BWL" for "Baden-Württemberg Land" and so on) and then only digits.
In some countries like Denmark, there are some specific vehicle designations to identify the field of use that vehicle belongs to, but they will typically be different from country to country. Here in DK, it's like this for most vehicles:
1. For example, any commercial vehicle (tax exempt and only allowed for commercial use, typically vans, trucks, etc) must have a yellow plate (looks like the ones found in Netherland).
2. Some vehicles can be registered for mixed commercial+private use, and their plate will similarly be a mix of 2/3rds-white, and 1/3rd-yellow. We call them "parrot plates", but don't ask me why haha.
3. Any vehicles registered for diplomatic use (for diplomats or foreign representatives) must have blue plates to indicate the diplomatic immunity/protection/rights of the people inside.
Plates for vehicles pre-1977 are allowed the classid number plates which are fully black with white numbers/lettering.
But weren't mixed commercial/private use vehicles equipped with 'parrot plates' long before 1977...? Can an owner of a let's say Volvo 145 Express that originally served as commercial/private use vehicle have the parrot plates today but with the vintage layout?
@@localsheriff No they were not, they only came post standardization of European plates. Prior to that it at least wasn't indicated from the plate itself what use the vehicle was for.
Keep in mind, the vehicle use simply dictates what type of registration taxes are paid for the vehicle when it's registered for public road use. You can still use regular plates for commercial vehicles, it just means the vehicle costs more to buy/lease. Commercial and mix/commercial plates simply mean the vehicle is cheaper to register. But vehicles pre 1977 use vintage registration anyways which is basically the lowest fee possible, so there wouldn't be any advantage from having parrot plates on a car from pre 1977.
Commercial plates don't give you any special rights, only compromises, so if the car can be had with normal plates for the same price, then there is no point going for commercial plates. In other words, there is no disadvantage to use the vintage plate type if the car is eligible for them. They offer all the same benefits as any modern standard and commercial plates do :)
Spain has the E because the Countrname is Espana in spanish.
In Germany the top "round seal is the expiration date of the technical inspection: Year is color coded and written in the middle of the seal (Therefore Police can see directly: Color of 2022 (brown) = expired. Colors are: 2023 (pink), 2024 (green), 2025 (orange), 2026 (blue) 2027 (yellow) and than again brown for 2028).
The month at 12o'clock position is the month the inspection is expired.
Below the inspection seal is the seal of the registration authority (can be State (e.g. for Berlin (B), Hamburg (HH) or Bremen (HB), the County (e.g. Main-Taunus-Kreis (MTK), Kreis Ahrweiler (AW) ) or the City (e.g. Cologne (K), Munich (M), Frankfurt/Main (F)) or in some cases the Country (Bundeswehr (Y) - German military, Border Patrol/Zoll (BD 16 - )
And there is a black block on the inspection sticker around the 12. So police do not actually need to read the upper number but only see the position of the black block to know the due month.
Well the registration authority in Germany is always the local county/city where the vehicle owner is registered. For Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen as city-states of course there is no difference between city and state. but these days you don't need to change plates anymore if you move to a different county/city (before that you just could keep the old plates if you re-registered the car within the same county/city), you can keep the old registration. So somebody now having registered the car in Hamburg (HH) could still have Berlin (B) plates legally. Most people will still opt to have the plates changed though, as Germans are very local-conscious. That's why many counties now have several location codes these days, as old codes that got withdrawn due to counties being merged since the early 70s have been reintroduced. There are also prefixes possible in German plates, like "H" for vintage vehicles older than 30 years and in original state (e.g. B-FR 3456 H) = cheaper in road tax and exemption from emission restrictions, and "E" for battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles (as long as they don't exceed 50 grams of carbondioxide emissions per kilometer and are capable of at least 60 kms electric-only range). Vehicles that are registered federally are Federal Police (BP), Federal Waterways Authority (BW), Various federal institutions and authorities like Parliament, Federal Council, Federal Constitutional Court, Federal Customs Authority, Federal Ministries, the Chancellery, Office of the Federal Presdident etc. (BD), Federal Disaster Relief Agency (THW) and Armed Forces (Y, because all other letters were already taken - also the Armed Forces still use the old font and plates are non-reflective) And finally, the head honchos: 0-1 (Federal President), 0-2 (Chancellor), 0-3 (Minister of Foreign Affairs), 0-4 (First Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs), 1-1 (President/Speaker of the Parliament).
Hi Ian, about the German plate.
As I have seen in other comments, correctly pointed out. The top plack refers to when the next technical inspection is due. It consists of a six year cycle for the colour and the due month is at the top with December between the markings. This allows people in a trailing police car to see an expired plate from some distance. It is also only present on the rear plate. Otherwise the plates are identical.
The bottom plaque is in fact a seal from the state where the plate was registered, showing that the car has at least third party insurance. If you lose your car insurance, this seal has to be removed, sometimes by the police, and the car must not move under its own power until the insurance is reinstated. For all law-abiding citizens, this seal will only be removed if you are deregistering a car and want to keep the plate as a souvenir. In this case the seal will be shaved off to mark the plate as being void.
Oh, and greetings from Germany. 😉
Heads up on the Irish plate. The 131 is the year of the vehicle. It goes to 132 in the second half of the year. The W is the county the vehicle is registered in. In this case Waterford. If you had a 2023 car from Dublin registered today it would show 232 D 12345.
Very cool 😎
@@IWrockerThe only non white plates are Defence forces plates which are black and silver.
@@IWrockerAzerbaijan is not in Europe neither are Armenia and Georgia
@@OscarOSullivan😊scientists most of the time agree on a European Asia border that follows the Oeral mountains trough Kazachstan, the borders of Iran, and turkey. Through the Bosporus, picking up Cyprus in the far south east. Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey are thereby countries which are both European and Asian.
That’s what I learned from my teacher and reading many atlases as a simple Dutchman. I’m fully aware that political and cultural borders may lead to other conclusions, this is just simply what science says.
@@jorispepijn Agreed but it seems the definition of Europe seems to be to have been part of Christendom
About the French plates, the logo on the second strip is for the région (the biggest french subdivision (18)) and the small number in the strip is for the département (which is the subsequent subdivision). Also, although it is forbidden, some like to put a sticker on the logo of the region because of their regional identity, we often see it in vendée for instance.
In the uk there’s a significant market for standard plates that can be read as a word/words but that’s not the same as an actual custom plate. Strictly speaking you’re not meant to mess with the spacing of the characters even.
Between the various formats of license plate we’ve had over the years there’s a bit of a range of number/letter combinations available to buy but you’re still working with existing available registration numbers not making your own up from scratch.
I remember seeing a photo of 2 Minis for sale with licence plates of HI5 and HER5.
I forget how much they were asking for them, but it was well outside my price range!
On the Czech Republic license plate the symbols in the middle are for the emission and technical inspection. I may be wrong.
2:53 some history lessons on BiH plates:
Due to the Yugoslav wars of 1990s Bosnia and Herzegovina is split in three parts: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and Brčko District. Vehicles which wore licence plates from one entity would be subject to vandalism in the other entity. Wikipedia is better at explaning it than me.
The post-1998 system of obscuring the region is also complicated by the fact that drivers of cars, lorries and buses proud of their ethnicity will advertise this phenomenon with all the matching insignia.
If you want to know more about politics and in general about BiH it's a deep rabbit hole on Wikipedia
6:14 part on the right is Area code (county, region). Something like RA on Germany plates
7:28 Croatian military also has yellow plates. But they're special plates so probably don't count. Also many countries have taxi licence plates in yellow
9:42 it's also area code (or oblast/region)
10:02 if your talking about 2 small letter under Serbian Cross, they're cyrilic letters for region. So СУ under it is cyrilic for SU (Subotica)
10:28 E is for España. Country identifiers are usually written in language of the country. D (Deutschland), HR (Hrvatska), IS (Island)
13:28 Croatia does allow custom plates. City designation (ZG, KA, PU) and coat of arms always have to be on the plate, but after those you can have from one to seven letters/numbers of your choice or you can have normal style of plate (as seen in the video) but with your own custom 3 or 4 numbers and 1 or 2 letters. They cost from €200 to €270
16:00 a lot of BMW drivers have internal BMW code as plates. For example the ones I saw: SK-039-E (E39 5-series), SK-0091-E (E91 3-series touring), ZG-0340-M (BMW M340i), SK-006-S (Audi S6)
5:36 that's the latest Hungarian license plate, which was introduced in July 2022. Up until then we had the ABC-123 format, which is still in use (even the older pre-EU-membership plates).
The font on the Dutch plate is designed so it's not easily modified. So the P doesn't have that gap. So you can't easily add the part to make an R because then the gap at the top wouldn't be there. Of course you could add like little bit of tape or something, but it's just that little extra bump to make it harder. There's also no personalized plates because the plate is tied to the car, not the owner. So if you sell the car, the plate goes with it.
The round stickers on the German license plates:
the one at the top is the next technical inspection of the vehicle. Every 2 years you have to go for a technical inspection to check whether the vehicle (trucks, motorcycles, cars and trailers) is still roadworthy. If this is no longer the case, the vehicle will be repaired in a workshop at the owner's expense or if the price of the repair exceeds the value of the vehicle, there are three options: 1) Sale in parts. 2nd option: scrapping, 3rd option: sale abroad (usually Eastern Europe or Africa)
The second round sticker on the German license plate is the federal state in which the vehicle is registered. There are 16 federal states in Germany, the colored symbols on the sticker are the coats of arms of the federal states. The federal states are comparable to the federal states in the USA.
In Denmark there are also yellow license plates, but these are only reserved for commercial vehicles.
Not only the federal state, but in small letters also the name of the county.
Slovenia also allows custom plates and you can have minimum of 3 letters/numbers or combination of both (don't know what max is), besides the first two letters, which designate the region of registration authority and the corresponding coat of arms (in your example LJ = Ljubljana with the castle and the dragon, other regions have different ones), which ofcourse you can't change and it costs around 100eur. They also have a small bar code at the bottom centre, which was hardly visible in the picture.
Front plates in Switzerland don't show the Swiss and cantonal coat of arms, just the two-letter abbreviation for the canton and the numbers.
The rear plates can be in two different formats: on one line, as shown in the video or on two lines. The two-line version has the Swiss coat of arms, the canton and the cantonal coat of arms on the first line and the digits on the second. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Switzerland )
On French plates, the number on the right is the départment, which is about the size of a US county. The départments are numbered alphabetically with 01 being the départment of Ain to 95 for Val d'Oise. This numbering system is also used for the postal codes in France. The first 2 numbers of a town's postal code is the départment number. My town, Strasbourg is in the départment of Bas Rhin (Lower Rhine) which is 67, and my postal code is 67000. Bas Rhin is numbered from the R in Rhin and not the B in Bas. So it's one of the few places in France where two consecutive numbered départments are next to each other, with the neighboring départment being Haut Rhin, number 68.
Dutch number plates aren't just yellow with black lettering. We also have blue plates with black lettering, green plates with black lettering, and white plates with black lettering. The letter formats are pretty similar, but blue plates are meant for taxis, be it regular cars or small vans configured for passengers owned by registered taxi-companies. Regular public transport busses - including taxi-van sized busses for low volume routes - or touring cars have yellow plates. The green plates are for car traders and garages in order to allow for test drives or moving a car to a different location within a limited range of the registered postal address. White plates can be either temporary plates for cars to be exported by road, or duplicates to be put on light trailers (50 cc) start with the letter "M". Mopeds (
There is a car from Poland with a customized plate driving near me in The Netherlands for the past 10 years with "NO WODKA".
Always a giggle when I see it drive by
Heyho Ian, man from Luxembourg here! Love your content btw ;)
Our plates for oldtimers are top - black and white very simple but so nice a bit like those from Liechtenstein but without a logo and you could even have one with only 4 digits
The Netherlands also has other color plates: blue (taxi), green (dealer registration), white (trailers caravans etc)
That is the same in all EU countries.
Not it is not Irish taxis have standard plate colours
@@ronaldderooij1774 there is no european standard for all those special plates.
in germany, taxis have normal plates, white with green letters are tax-exempt, white with red letters are for car dealers, and there are around a dozen more special plates ...
Also vintage cars are allowed to have the dark blue plates with white letters/numbers which were common from the 1930's to the 1970's.
In Denmark the yellow plates mean two seats only, and the blue plates mean diplomatic license plate.
An important feature of EU number plates (and other European plates) is machine readability. We don't have police waiting at the side of the road to catch speeders, we mostly use speed cameras and the ticket will come by mail - also sent across borders! And you can sometimes also pay road toll for highways, tunnels and bridges by electronic means - you register your number plate and the amount will be deducted from your account when the number plate is identified by electronic checkpoints. So no need to employ a plethora of people - I guess you could call that European efficiency.
In the Netherlands there's many different colors for different purposes, tax and insurance implications.
The yellows are standard.
White plates are for lightweight trailers (below 750kg) and bicycle carriers.
Blue plates are for taxi.
Light green plates are for car merchants, these only allow for test drives of unsold vehicles, any other use is prohibited.
Black plates are for classic cars (pre 1978).
Fun Fact: Most of them using the German FE-Font, or some even the old German font.
Modern FE-Font:
Albania, Bosnia-Herzigovina, Cyprus, Georgia, Malta,
Old Font: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden,
In Portugal, before 2020, on the right side there was a rectangle (same as blue) but it was yellow and had two numbers on top of each other, which means the year and month in which the vehicle was registered, the number above indicates the year, the bottom indicates the month. Example:
20
-----
01
The plate shown are the standard plates. In Germany you can have white plates with green lettering for commercial (and agricultural) vehicles, that are allowed to operate only in a 50 km radius around their home base. Then we have white plates with red lettering which are for car dealers and garages to move unregistered cars. Then we have "customs"-plates which are issued for cars that will be exported. They look like normal plates but have a yellow field at the side with an expiration date. We have "seasonal" plates, where there are two numbers on the right indicating the start and end month of their use (e.g. 05-10 = May to October for a convertable or a bike). We have two designator letters that follow the number on the right - H for historic vehicles and E for electric vehicles. Police cars have 3 letters indicating the Bundesland (state), a single number for the district and a dash (optional), and 4 or 5 numbers.
In the UK you may see a car plate with a white background and red characters stuck over the regular plate (trade plates) for those who have a number plate registered to their car business and covers insurance to drive it on the road.
Hi Ian for the italian plate, the right most blue stipe is not mandatory it's use for province identification (for example VE for Venice or MI for Milan), also you can guess how old is a car from the letter of the plate A are the oldest (1994 is when they introduced the EU plate) and now we are at the G letter
Nice, the german plate is from the district i live in "Landkreis Rastatt", the cost for a desired combination for the part after the TÜV and registration stamp cost around 10-13 €, some combinations are not allowed, often stuff that might refer to nazi things like KZ, SA, SS, HJ, but you could eventually make your car a SL UT or SE XY, if you live in the districts with the right starting letters, you can get nice combinations, like AM EN, HE LP, RA ID, WO LF and other stuff.
another such forbidden letter combination would probably be HH, but with the exception that HH as first letters is the default for *Hansestadt Hamburg*
@@Anson_AKBman darf dann die 2x 8 nicht in Kombination mit HH-HJ oder ähnlich verwenden(weil die 8 für den Buchstaben „H“ steht)😮
On Belgian license plates, the plate is actually linked to the driver of the car instead of the actual car itself. If you buy a new car and sell the old one, you can choose to either keep your old license plate or to have a new combination made. (A lot of other EU countries have the plates specifically linked to car)
License plates starting with "1-" were distributed between 2011 and 2020. As from 2021 newly distributed plates start with "2-".
Following the type of vehicle or the usage of the vehicle the license plate combination can change as well.
Oldtimers (classic cars) start with "O-", Trailers start with "Q-", Taxi's start with "T-", Farming equipment starts with "G-", Motorcycles start with "M-", Moped start with "SA" or "SB", Electric bicycles start with "SP"
As the plates a linked to the driver a lot of the old pré-EU type license plates are still around, as these are only mandatory for change to the EU model, when they change vehicle.
Once a Belgian license plate has been cancelled, the combination can never return to the road or be redistributed.
In the Netherlands we have different licenseplates for different vehicles.
The licenseplates stay with the vehicle for the entire time the car is registered in the country. No matter who owns it. Therfore you can estimate the age of the car or when it has been first registered in the Netherlands by the licenseplate.
We have bright blue plates with black font for taxi's.
Bright green plates with black font for garages and car dealers.
Classic cars from before 1974 can have a dark blue plate with white font.
Light commercial vehicles plates the first letter is V
Heavy commercial vehicles the first letter is B.
Motorcycles have a plate starting with M
Mopeds and scooters start wit D or F.
Trailers start with the W
Semi trailers start with the O
Diplomats drive with a CD plate.
The king with a plate AA ##
The font is changed years ago to unable tampering with it.
Before you could make a P out of a R and vice versa. They made it this way the R has an opening at the top and the P has the opening at the bottom.
Also the O has a opening at the top and the 0 is closed. Semi trailers are the only ones with the letter O in them.
Also our licence plate system doesn't accommodate any vowels. Exept for classic cars that date from before they were taken out.
And letters that look too much alike are skipped.
Also we went trough many styles of combinations.
Right now we have X-###-XX.
Before that we've had
XX-###-X
#-XXX-##
##-XXX-#
##-XX-XX
XX-XX-##
XX-##-XX
XX-##-##
##-XX-##
##-##-XX
Always with 6 digits and dashes in between.
Fun fact Netherlands and Luxemburg are the only ones with yellow plates front and back. And have nearly the same flag. Luxemburg has a lighter shade of blue in their flag.
Bit the UK and France also have yellow plates on the back of their vehicles. They have white of the front and yellow on the back.
Switzerland and Italy have a small plate on the front and a normal size one on the back.
European Union has a standard for license plates. Europe as a whole is a completely different matter.
Slovak plates have new design but the old ones are still valid. Old ones are more colorful - green background for electric vehicles, yellow for oldtimers, blue for diplomats etc., with the new design they removed all the colors, so all types of plates are simply black/white, only electric vehicles have dark green font which is almost impossible to recognise if you dont look closer. Vanity plates cost 331€ for car or 165.50€ for motorcycle. Interesting fact - those prices are still the same since 1997 when the vanity plates were established, in that time it was an average monthly wage so old vanity plates are very rare, now the average monthly wage is 4-5 times higher, so vanity plates are much more common. But only few days ago government chaged the prices, so from 1st of april vanity plates will cost 500€
Another great reaction Ian, greetings from Slovenia. Here's explanation of our licence plates. First two letters are regional codes (there are 11) the coat of arms is for administrative municipality where the plate was issued (there's 58 and are historical city coats of arms, mine is from 1477) followed by combination of letters and numbers (maximum 6, excluding Slovenia n letters č,š,ž and foreign x,y,w,q) the green outline because it's our national colour.
In Switzerland customized plates are not available. But, sometimes there are auctions for very popular numbers. So far, the most expensive plate has been ZG 10 which achieved an amount of CHF 233 k.
interesting, but why Zug? I would expect a plate from Geneve maybe.
@@jernejulcar8325Zug is where the money is
@@jernejulcar8325 The smallest private number in the Geneve Region is GE 4000. 1 to 3999 are owned by companies, government, law enforcement etc.
Zug is very popular by rich people because of its low taxes.
@@sw378 Ah ok interesting. Didn't know that about Geneve. Yes i did hear the Zug has the lowest taxes of all cantones.
SG1 was very expensive also. Of course it stands for "Sankt Gallen", and not for "StarGate SG1"
Lichtenstein is not in the EU. Lichtenstein has a customs, monetary and defense union with Switzerland. They don't even have an army. A few years ago, Swiss soldiers accidentally strayed into the area of Lichtenstein. But after asking for directions, they left peacefully.
FL = Principality of Liechtenstein / Fürstentum Liechtenstein
It bears mentioning that some countries have differerent plate layouts on the front vs the rear. For example, the Swiss front plate is much smaller whan the one on the rear. The German rear plate has that badge to denote the due date of the next inspection, but the front plate does not, etc.
Unfortunately the video is not entirely consistent - when a country has different plates front and rear, sometimes it would show the rear plate, and on other cases the front plate.
An example for the latter is the UK. The plate shown in the video is the front plate. The rear plate is actually black on yellow, like the Dutch one.
The Netherlands used to have black plates i think to around 1977 or something like that. When i was young (around 2000 i think) i saw occasianly older cars still using the black plates. NL also has simple white plates for the use ofcertain atachments like an bicycle carrier or an smaller trailer. Also blue for the taxi, and green is often used with test driving with buying new cars
Blue plates with white letters, my father drives one. They changed colour on the first of jan 1978, according to another comment.
"symbols" are called "coat of arms" and are related to houses of monarchy who used to rule or are still ruling
In Germany you can get a number plate of your choice - as long as it has the standard format. This format is always: 1-3 letters for the city or county, then 1 or 2 letters, then 1-4 numbers. The cityx code is not negociable, it has to be the city where you live. The rest you can ask for - and if its not in use yet, you can get it for a few extra bucks.
Examples: if you would now move to Munich in Germany, your plate could be M - IW 2023. Forming words may be possible if you live in a city that fits, for example BI - ER 42. However, if you live in a city like Hamburg (HH) or Herford (HF) you are screwed, because there are no words beginning like that.
Coming from Dortmund, we have DO-OM and DO-OF and DO-PE :)
You no longer (since 2015) need to change the number plate if you move to a different city or if the car you buy has been registered somewhere else before. So if you move somewhere else but want no one to know you can keep your old code 😁
8:35 Nederland holland plate font is called Kenteken
The Norwegian and Danish looks really alike from a distance. The way to tell the difference is that Danish plates has a tiny bit more space between the letters and the numbers and has got a red frame.
On the Irish plates, the first three numbers are when the vehicle was first registered - the 1st 2 numbers are the year, the third number is 1 for vehicles registered in January to June, and 2 for July to December (until 2012 only the year was indicated, but it was changed partly so cars wouldn’t have “unlucky 13”); the one or two letters identifies the city (1 letter) or county (2 letters) (for counties the letters are usually the first and last letters of the English name of the county, the text above the number is the Irish language name, so “Port Láirge” is Waterford); the final numbers run sequentially from 1, though there are some reserved ranges for special purposes e.g. imported cars registered in Dublin start from D120000, and in Meath from MH15000. In the largest cities, Cork, Dublin, Galway, and Limerick, the first registration e.g. 231D1, 232C1 etc, are reserved for the Lord Mayor of the city.
In British plates, the first 2 letters identify where the vehicle was registered (1st letter is a region of the country, 2nd letter can identify an office within the region), the 2 numbers are the same as the year of first registration for vehicles registered between 1st March and 31st August, while the numbers are 50 more for vehicles registered between September and February, the final 3 letters are random.
In Northern Ireland plates, the 2nd and 3rd letters of the group of 3 (one of which will be I or Z) identify the county it’s registered in, and the numbers run from 1000 to 9999.
In France you’ll also see cars with a red plate. Those are for cars bought in France by non residents. They do not support taxes and have to be exported from France before the validity date shown on the right of the plate. If it stays in France, the plate is converted to a regular one and the sales taxes are due. Those plates are known as ‘transit temporaire´. There are also green plates for diplomats.
Poland has black, white, green, blue and yellow plates (I'm talking background). Black are for vehicles registered before the year 2000, white with Polish flag were at 2000-2006, white with Euroband are post-2006 and today, green plates are for EVs, blue are for dyplomatic use only with the first two digits representing the country, and yellow are for historic vehicle registration.
Switzerland is actually called the Helvetic confederacy and each confederacy is independent
Since you like the black Lichtenstein plate so much, a note about the history of the number plates in Europe. In the beginning of the motorized traffic, most of the european countries had black plates with white font first! This was gradually changed to white plates with black font over time. Some countries changed this early on, for e.g. Germany and Switzerland. Much countries e.g. Austria, France and Italy changed this during the 1990s. Some also introduced a new numbering scheme on same time, to allow for more vehicles. This was also the time when the blue stripe in the plates of the EU countries appeared.
And now the princedom Lichtenstein, which usually adopted the traffic laws of Switzerland, did not change the black color of their regular plates until today. Swiss army vehicles also still have a black plate with white font. But interestingly there are also another background colors for some special plates in Switzerland AND Liechtenstein: Plates for work and construction vehicles are Blue, plates for agricultural vehicles are Green and plates for light vehicles and motorcycles, limited to 45 km/h are Yellow.
Russian car license numbers also have a region or district number on the right side, for example this one is 78 from St. Petersburg.
France: the second strip on the right is the region symbol (top right) and the department number bottom right: parisian region is the star/explosion symbol and u will have one of the department number under it ( usually the one where u registered the car), u can change the right strip if u have preference from an other region ( u were born elsewhere or lived elsewhere ) so u can put corsica region and number if u want to or another region/department linked to it.
as for the numbers: the first car with this system was AA-001-AA , this system can put cars immatriculation up to 289,341,480 cars (70year lifespan), the plate are linked to the life car. the ,I,O,U are not allowed as it can be confused with 0 (zero), 1 and V
the only combination letter not allowed is SS ( for historical reason, u guess why....) ,it will jump from SR to ST
the E for Spain comes from Espana. D for Deutschland. In Germany the first, 2 or 3 letters are from the city/ region. If you see a plate begins with the letter B is is based in Berlin. In Belgium you can choose your own number plate (within the law) The number plate is not based on the car but on the owner. In the Netherlands are the basic number plates yellow front and back. Always with 6 numbers/letters combination. oldtimers can have a darkblue plate with white letters/numbers. Taxi's have lighter blue plates. And when you towing something it has to have a white plate with black letters/numbers same combi as the normal yellow one.Or they have their own numberplate The letter A or AA is royal car or ambasse cars. B or V are for trucks. M are for motorbike.
The german numberplates start with the municipality from where they are registered, which consists of one to three letters. The one you showed is fron the city of Ravensburg. The upper decal shows when that vehicle must undergo the next technical inspection (which is every two years for cars and motorbikes and every year for trucks and busses. This decal is on the back plate only.), the lower one shows the coat of arms of the state the vehicle is registered in (in this case Baden-Württemberg in the south-west of Germany). on the right of the decals there is a combination of one or two letters and a number of up to four digits, which both together form the personalized part pf the number.
Greetings from Germany,
Marcus
5:50 You should dig deeper into Irish license plates: the funny thing about them is that you can use any legible font you want. So, you see a whole variety of fonts around... ;-)
In the UK registration numbers are assigned to vehicles when bought from new and stay with the vehicle for its entire life unless scrapped or written off. The first two letters show where the vehicle was registered and the diigits show the year of registration. The three letters are random. This information allows police to know the name of the registered keeper and wether the driver has insurance and the vehicle has a valid MOT (Ministry of Transport test certificate)
There are even some differences on plates for electric vehicles - in Germany you add an "E" in the end (for example L - EB - 2019E), in Austria the letters and numbers are written in green, in Hungary the plate has a green background.
Irish plates are very easy to read. The first three numbers are the year and which half of the year the car was first registered in. In the example shown, 131 is the first half of 2013 (132 would be the second half of 2013). Before 2013 it was just two numbers for the entire year. The letter or two letters in the middle indicates which county the car was registered in. The W in the example is Waterford. The final set of numbers can be any length and it increases by one with each car that's registered in the county, so the 12345 shown in the example is the 12345th car registered in Waterford in the first half of 2013. The small writing above the registration is the name of the county in Irish.
My first car was a Renault Clio and the registration was 97-C-19174, so it was the 19174th car registered in Cork in 1997. If you were to buy the first car registered in Limerick at the start of next year, then your registration would be 241-LK-1.
@IWrocker: for Germany. The stickers on the plate are not when the license plate expires. There are actually 3 stickers. 1st sticker shows you the state the vehicle is registered in. In your example it was the seal of Baden-Würtenberg. 2nd sticker shows until when TÜV is valid. TÜV is technical approval for road safety. There is another sticker which shows the valid date for the exhaust. The first characters on the plate ( before the dash ) will tell you which city the vehicle is registered in. RA is for Rastatt
The emissions test sticker is no longer fitted to plates, it used to be above the state seal on front plates. Emissions testing is now part of the technical roadworthiness inspection (colloquially "TÜV") so there's no seperate sticker anymore.
@@KaterChris thanks for the update! Left Germany 23 years ago. Things changed :)
In Norway you'll also find green plates. These are for vans.
Some cars can be retrofitted for this by removing the rear seats and installing a dividing wall to protect the front, thus turning it into a van. Usually station wagons.
The taxation on vans is different/lower than regular cars, so you can do this to reduce the price of the new car.
Also popular in Denmark to get a yellow van/commercial vehicle plate.
Wenn der Diesel in Norwegen 🇳🇴 anders besteuert wird, hat er rosa Farbe und in Deutschland grün(Heizöl)… Wie war der Name… für diesen Diesel in Norwegen 🤔🤔🤔
5:15 This is the date that you must pass the mandatory technical inspection to prove that your vehicle is safe to be on the road.. We have these badges also in Greece.
The smaller letters in the Serbian license plates are in fact the same as the bigger ones, albeit in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Also in Serbia, as in most of the countries that once was part of former Yugoslavia, the first two letters denotes the district. BG for Beograd (Belgrade), SU for Subotica, KŠ for Kruševac and so on and so forth…
For Croatia ZG is sing of county, like ZG stand for Zagreb county, you can have ST, RI, ZA, OS and more
OS is Osjiek?
Osjecka zupanija, or county, but yea@@wakda
A few things I noticed/read about:
- large police SUVs in Serbia all seem to have "ПОЛИЦИЈА" (Policija, Serbian for police) written on their plates, smaller police vehicles follow a "П-123 456" pattern
- Taxi plates in Serbia often end on "TX", while the last 2 letters with other vehicles are random
- While private vehicles in Bosnia have a "A12-A-123" pattern, taxis have "TA-123456"
- truck trailers from Spain often, if not always, also have the truck's license plate attached to them
- German plates can end on "H" (historic vehicle) or "E" (electric vehicle)
- the German city of Munich just got a new regional code "MUC", adding to the current "M" and allowing more plates to be registered in Munich
- Some countries that still use the cyrillic alphabet, i.e. Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia, only use letters on their plates that are also in the latin alphabet
- as Russia designates the region a car is from, a few region codes are not allowed to drive in most countries as they are exclusively handed out for occupied Ukrainian territories. one example would be regional code "92" for the city of Sevastopol.
- The Ukrainian plate in your video has "AK" as region code, which stands for Crimea and is no longer issued with Crimea under occupation
In slovakia, we no longer have plates like that, it changed in the beginning of this year. The plate has different font and the first two letters no longer represent district, where it comes from, it goes like AA 001 AA and on. The old plates are still in use, but the new issued ones are the new design.
Heres some explanation of the diference between plates.
The background of the plates are reflective and the reason why some are yellow is due to better visibility in snow... and theres an exemption to this rule that in some countrys, here in portugal for example, yellow plates are meant for vehicles that CAN NOT go into highways due they're urban nature, like "kei" cars (tiny cars with very small engines similare to japan kei cars, we call it "retirement eaters", since its mostly for older people cause theres no need for a license to drive, only a permit) and small engine mopeds.
The date tags in license plates is when the cars received the plates, portugal took that aditionally blue strip off since it hinder some car sales due to before 2008 car anual tax doenst include the emissions tax part, therefore more cheap to have... Newer cars pay the tax based on engine size, emissions and type of fuel, diesel ones are the most expensive ones.
One of the major diferences are the number and letter sequences.
For example here in portugal older plates were white number and letters and black background plates and them changed to the european standard.
Last couple of years the sequence of the plates changed from 00-AA-00 to AA-00-AA since they reached the limit of possibilites of dual letters and 4 numbers.
The german plates are pretty easy to read. The letters left of the stickers are abbrevations of the "county" where the car is registered. That county is also printed onto the bottom sticker. The biggest citys have only one letter like B for Berlin or F for Frankfurt. This continues with two letters like WI for Wiesbaden and maxes out at three letters. To the right of the stickers you then have one or two letters, followed by one to four digits. That part is assigned either randomly or for a small fee you pretty much get the letters and digits you want as long the combination is not taken already. There are some restrictions but this would go too far. I for example got my initials combined with my birthday and -month.
WES-EN 666😊
Also, you should check out the "special" plates. In Norway, there are different plates for cargo vans, military vehicles, vehicles used on Svalbard, etc
…und ganz rechts das „E“ oder „EL“ steht für Elbiler und nicht für Elch 😂😂😂
Fun facts from Denmark, partially also mentioned by others:
Cars have white plates, lorries/trucks have yellow. There is also an intermediate taxation category, one third yellow and two thirds white. All have the thin red rim.
Hearses are technically lorries so they are officially yellow plate vehicles but the actual plates are white so people don't come to think of the deceased as freight.
Danish plates were black with white numbers until the 70s. The armed forces still have that.
The royal court have a special design with a yellow crown and white numbers on black. Other monarchies have special letter combinations for royal cars but Denmark is the only one with a special design.
In Denmark it's optional if you want an EU stripe or not. If you have a strong European identity, you can choose it but if you consider the EU more of a practical measure, you can choose a plate without a stripe.
Vanity plates exist.
5:23 It is the TÜV sticker. TÜV stands for (Technischer Überwachungsverein) Technical Inspection Association. It is normal that every vehicle has to have an TÜV every two years. There are exceptions, for example for trucks, buses and so on. The plaque underneath indicates the county in which the car is registered.
In Ukraine, we do have vanity plates, but those cost quite a lot of money and have to be renewed much more often.
We also have different colors for plates, depending on the usecase.
Yellow ones are for personnel transportation (like buses or single-purpose taxis)
Black ones are for military.
Red ones are temporary plates that you get once you buy the car until you get it registered and get permanent one.
Recently we also got white plates with green font - those are for electric cars.
Additionally, the only letters we use on our plates are the letters that exist in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets(except of vanity ones, which allow full cyrillics).
On Belgian 7-digit plates the first number (1 or 2 in 2023) is replaced by a letter for certain types of vehicles, for example G for agricultural vehicles, Q for trailers, O for oldtimers, Z for dealers and garages (those are green on white plates) T-L for shuttle services with driver, etc ... For taxis the first number and letter are replaced by T-X. Square or custom plates are allowed.
Greetings from Ireland IRL🇮🇪 👋 Can you tell me please when was the new 1-xxx-xxx introduced in B?
@@rmartin147 The "1" was introduced in 2010, the "2" in December 2020 (first plates issued in January or Februari 2021). They can use up to "7", "8" and "9" are already used for special plates. I think they try to last 10 years with a number though it could be coincidence.
The 7-digit plates use a darker red than before, a compromise between those who wanted black digits (police ...) and those who wanted to keep the old, paler red (cause they're special).
Full Belgian plate history (in Dutch) :
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgisch_kenteken
Thank you very much indeed for your reply. Extremely interesting how things have changed. Greetings from Dublin Ireland 🇮🇪 👋
Last number on french plate also tells from which "department" (state) they came from
Really nice to spot some very rare numbers on our roads
In France if your car is 30+ years old and never been modified (registered as "collection" ) you can have black plates with white or gray characters
First stamp on CZ plate are date of expiration of your car mandatory service (you need go to technical service ruled by state laws every 2 year = no junk cars on roads) and second stamp is date of expiration of your car mandatory service for measuring exhaust gas...... this is for old cars only.
Hello, probably mentioned a couple of times 😅, The Netherlands has the yellow (used to be blue plates with white writing), Luxemburg has Yellow and England has yellow on the back and white in the front. 😃😃 The Netherlands has also green plates, that is for when you test drive a car. We also have blue plates, they are used by Taxi’s.
As I suspected, Åland Islands were not included in this list, I tried linking a couple of examples of how our plates look here, but youtube apparently seems to think Im trying to scam people or whatever cause my comment kept getting removed
The CZ small "badges" are "Emission control" marker and "Technical control" marker, they have year+month punched out marking when the control was done and you are not allowed to drive with invalid one unless on the way to the nearest control station from your location. The green for emissions is also benn phased out as this control became mandatory part of the "technical control process, making the emission mark redundant, you wont pass technical if your emissions are not passing, making your car "unfit for use on public roads".
Swiss Plates have the Canton on it:
Front Plate: 2-Letter Cantoncode, Numbers
Rear Plate: Swiss Flag, 2-Letter Cantoncode, Number, Canton Flag. (Example in this Video: SG= Canton of St. Gallen)
The Swiss Countrycode CH (Confederatio Helvetica) must be added as a Bumpersticker if you drive outside Switzerland too.
There are different Colors of Plates as well.
White is the normal one.
Green is Agricultural Vehicles less than 40Km/h, used only on it's own Farm.
Blue is specialized Vehicles (Most often seen on Firetrucks)
Brown is Construction Equipement and big Machines
Black with only: Swiss Flag, M, Numbers is Military
If you want a special Number (Birthdate f.ex.), you can pay to get it, if it doesn't exist already.
a thing to note is that countries might have several different types of plates. For example Denmark has 10 types of plates not counting personalized ones or temporary, but normal people can have 3 of these depending on usage: the white one you saw for privately owned cars, Yellow for businesses, and then there's also a middle ground where there's a yellow part on the left side under the first two characters (with the rest being white) which is a commercially used privately owned car. There's also military plates which are commonly seen driving around, Danish armed forces have Black plates with 5 white numbers spaced by a dot ##.### like so (there's also a yellow logo for either Army, Navy, Airforce or the non-specific Defense logo on the left). Diplomats drive around in vehicles with white text on blue backgrounds, the Danish queen has a car with a black plate with a crown (Although I don't think she does the driving), older cars can have "veteran" plates which are black with white text similar to the military ones. The video also don't mention the faroe islands which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but has their own FO-plates.
And one thing that's not shown here about the Swedish plates that is relatively new is that the letter/number serial scheme (ABC123) can be different now, where there's numbers in the three first characters not just letters, they changed that some 5 years ago because they were running out of combinations, and Sweden has military plates that are black with 6 evenly spaced letters in yellow. Swedish car dealerships also have plates that are a lime green with black text for when a customer want to test-drive a car, Swedish Diplomats drive around with a light blue background and black text and taxis have yellow plates with black text.
I'm sure the rest of the EU countries have similar outliers as well, but I don't know anything about them...
Cars from 2019 and newer in Sweden have number plates with a letter instead of a number at the end [ABC 12A] The combinations started to reach the end. Then we also have personal plates 2 - 7 signs for cars if you want to pay for that, 600 USD. Taxi has yellow plates, the armed forces black plates, diplomatic cars blue. Rallycars orange, car dealers have green plates that they only use when you test drive the car, a special red interim plate when you import a car before it is registered here.
10:30 In Spain's new plates (*), the 3 letters are always consonantes, not vowels. I think that's to guarantee no unintended words are formed.
(*) Some cars still have the old format: 1-2 letters for the province, 4-5 numbers, 2 letters)
In Portugal, there have already been several versions for standard vehicles. The general numbering system for Portuguese cars was implemented on 1 January 1937 and consists of three groups of two characters, separated by two dashes. Initially the sequence used was AA-00-00, with a black background and white characters. In 1992 the colour scheme was reversed to 00-00-AA and in 2005 to 00-AA-00. From 1998 until 2020, it included a blue side stripe on the right with the year of the licence plate at the top and the month at the bottom (the month corresponded to the compulsory inspection, or MOT) and the letter K was reserved for imported vehicles. When this came to an end, the sequence AA-00-AA was introduced.
There are some special number plates such as those beginning with the letters GNR - Guarda Nacional Republicana (National Republican Guard, a militarised security force), AP-00-00: reserved for Portuguese Navy vehicles, AM-00-00: reserved for Portuguese Air Force vehicles; white lacquers with red characters, without "euroband" with the sequences 000-xx000: reserved for diplomats and officials on international missions. (CD: Diplomatic Corps, CC: Consular Corps and FM: Official on (International) Mission) and the first group of digits identifies the country or international organisation (e.g. European Commission, NATO) to which they belong (e.g. 018: Belgium, 060: France, 095: Luxembourg, 115: Norway, 118: Netherlands, 200: European Commission, etc.).
You asked about special plates for certain vehicles, and there are actually a few.
For Germany alone I can already say there are special plate types for different circumstances. There is a seasonal plate type which will contain information in the right for its validity period like from april to October. Those can often be found on motorbikes, convertibles and sometimes RVs. Idea is that without having to do anything it is like reregistering and deregistering the vehicle every year and you don't have to pay tax outside the season. Insurance is reduced in that time as well. Then there are plates ending on an E for electric vehicles and ending on an H for historic vehicles. Also about taxes and some technical inspection requirenments. To qualify a vehicle has to be older than 25 years i think and to a high percentage original parts.
Then there are license plates with a red or yellow field on the right. The yellow ones are kind of one of licenses to transport a vehicle that is not fully registered. A red field one can be issued to dealers for test drives etc and can be mounted to any vehicle temporarily.
There are also license plates with green lettering.this also about taxes. You will find those on certain types of trailers, some agricultural vehicles or self deiving machines like for example cranes or concrete mixer trucks.
For denmark i know they have partially yellow or completely yellow plates as well. the completely yellow ones can be dound on comercially registered vehicles. The partially ones on commercially registered vehicles which are used privately as well.
There sure a lots of others i don't even know about.
When it comes to personalized plates in Germany, they call it "Wunschkennzeichen" and it allows you to choose the letters and numbers on your plate, depending on availability. But it remains one or two letters and up to four digit numbers. Though there are certain combinations excluded which could possibly be ambiguous or which resemble nazi symbols.
What people often choose is like their initials and birt date or year.
Lately especially in what we call a "Kreis" or "Landkreis" it think the closest thing in the us would be a county, you cannot only choose the code for that kreis, but older codes for cities within that Kreis which had been abandoned suring a reform in the seventies.
Hi, a few pointers
Rental cars in france have red plates, the text on the left is the province of the car
Old plates in Portugal can be black with white text
E is from España