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A license plate (number plate, registration plate) is a small plate attached to a vehicle. On many vehicles, they appear in pairs, with one attached to the front and another attached to the rear, although certain jurisdictions and vehicle types only require one plate—usually the rear. The plate has a serial number on it which uniquely identifies the vehicle. In some regions, the plate or plates stay with the vehicle for its entire lifetime, while other areas require that the plates be changed every few years.
The plate frame often contains advertisements inserted by the service center.
In Canada, Mexico, Australia, and the United States, license plates are issued by provincial/territorial/state governments. Their appearance is frequently chosen to contain symbols, colours, or slogans associated with the issuing state. The license plate number's format is chosen to provide enough numbers for all the motor vehicles in the state: Wyoming, the smallest U.S. state by population, uses NN NNNN or NN NNNL, with the first two numbers restricted to 1-23 and 99; Rhode Island, the smallest state by area, uses the formats LLNNN and NNNNN; while California and other populous states use NLLLNNN, where N is a number and L is a letter. Plates on trucks may have different formats such as NLNNNNN.
Sometimes, this format arises the problem with unintentional profane or inappropriate messages. Thus most randomization does not include the lettering such as FUK, DIE, or USA; and numbering usually does not include 911 or 666.
Historically, many U.S. plates were replaced every year, although the general practice in modern times is to send new "tags" (actually just small colored stickers with a year printed on them) to vehicle owners every year to indicate that the license is still valid. Tags that are not up to date quickly attract the attention of law enforcement, because this is a transaction that can usually be undertaken only by the car's registered owner; a delinquent registration tag is often an indicator that the vehicle may be stolen. The tags are placed on one corner of the plate, while the month of the year in which the tags would expire is printed in an opposing corner.
In the European Union, number plates of a common format are issued throughout (albeit still optional in some member states). Nevertheless, individual member states use differing numbering schemes, and even colours (e.g. the United Kingdom and France have yellow plates at the rear; see British car number plates). The common design consists of a blue strip on the left of the plate. This blue strip has the E.U. motif (12 yellow stars), along with the country code of the member state in which the vehicle was registered. With this vehicles do not require international code stickers for travelling between member states.
The People's Republic of China issues vehicles licence plates at its Vehicle Management Offices, under the administration of the Ministry of Public Security.
The current plates are of the 1992 standard, which consist of the one-character provincial abbreviation, a letter of the alphabet, and five number or letters of the alphabet (e.g. Jing A-12345, for a vehicle in Beijing). The number order is produced at random, i.e. Jing A-12345 will not be issued before Jing A-12344. A computer handles the randomisation. (A previous licence plate system, with a green background and the full name of the province in Chinese characters, actually had a sequential numbering order, and the numbering system was eventually beset with corruption.)
Yellow plates are issue for large vehicles of Chinese nationality. Blue plates, the most common sort, are issued for vehicles of Chinese nationality which are small or compact in size. Black plates are issued for vehicles belonging to foreigners, and persons from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. (Black licence plates are handed to vehicles of any size, as long as they are of foreign nationality.)
License plates in Japan are either white with green text, or the reverse. The top line names the office at which the vehicle is registered, and includes a numeric code that indicates the class of vehicle. The bottom contains one symbol (typically a kana), and up to four digits.
The format of the numbers in Russia is different from that in Soviet Union. The current format is a letter, followed by 3 digits and two more letters. To improve legibility of the numbers for Russian cars abroad, only a small subset of cyrillic characters that look like latin characters is used. Finally, the region number (77 and 99 for Moscow, 78 for Saint-Petersburg) and letters "RUS" are included, as well as the national flag. There is a different format for trailers (4 digits and 2 letters).
Police forces have special numbers on blue colored plates. There are special series (usually numbers starting with A) reserved for government officials (for example, A 001 AA usually belongs to the governor of the region). These numbers have a larger flag instead of the region number.
Rich businessmen, prominent politicians and crime lords often use illegally acquired special license plates (government or police) to get preferential treatment from the transport police and as a status symbol
In some countries, people can pay extra and get vanity plates: license plates with custom messages on them. Generally vanity plates are not allowed to have profane or obscene messages on them, and of course they must also be unique.
In some jurisdictions, including virtually all U.S. states, vehicle owners may also pay extra for specialty plates: with these, the sequence of letters and numbers is chosen by the licensing agency—as with regular plates—but the owners have a broad choice of plate designs. For example, a former soldier who became a prisoner of war might choose a special POW plate, an alumn or student of an area university might get a plate with the school's logo, or an outdoorsman might decide to pay extra for a plate depicting a nature scene. A portion of the extra cost of these license plates often ends up as a donation for a related school or agency.
There also exist novelty license plates, often sold in gift or novelty shops. Similar to vanity plates, these novelties are printed with an individual's name, but unlike vanity plates they are not intended for legal identification of an automobile. They can be displayed in the rear window, for example, or on the front of vehicles in jurisdictions that only require a valid rear plate (though that practice may not be legal in certain cases).
On the international level the license plates of different countries are distinguished by a supplementary license plate country code. This country designator is displayed in bold block uppercase on a small white oval plate or sticker on the rear of the vehicle near the number plate.
The allocation of codes in maintained by the United Nations as the Distinguishing Signs of Vehicles in International Traffic, being authorized by the UN's 1949 and 1968 Conventions on Road Traffic. Many, but far from all, vehicle codes created since the adoption of ISO 3166 coincide with either the ISO two or three letter codes.
For a full list of license plate country codes, see List of international license plate codes.
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