Registration plates

[DJones]

Having seen a few "10" plates in got me thinking what comes after the "10" plate:

"XX10 XXX" as in the latest..
"XX50 XXX" ok this can happen..
"XX01 XXX" ok this can also happen..
"XX51 XXX" this has already been used..

So what next....?

I know i know i need to get out more often....

[S2Coupe_Nic]

Link

[DJones]

Link

Ta...

So why did they start at "5" and not "1"....

[S2Coupe_Nic]

no idea...anyone? im curious now.

[Keeper of The Kitten]

It's not difficult ...you add 5 to the first number for the half-yearly change ...so 10, 60 for this year; 11, 61 for next year; 12, 62 for 2012 ...and so on. This will work nicely right up to 2049.

[re2500]

^^^True, what he said!^^^

[Ian Simmonds]

Just seems typically bureaucratically complicated; Why didn't they just incorporate the whole year thing into the plate, so...

0310 XXX for March etc

[Keeper of The Kitten]

I think they wanted to keep it down to the same number of characters as before - so two letters became the area (as had actually been the case before), two digits to recognise the age (as opposed to one letter), and three letters to identify individual cars (as opposed to three numbers maximum) ....using letters increases capacity dramatically, as there are 26 in our alphabet as opposed to only ten possible digits per character.

[S2 Ant]

I was pondering this the other day seems they currently go 51 / 56, 52 / 57 etc if you followed that pattern you'd get 10 / 15, which would screw you in 2015 lol so they've basically altered the pattern from now on - Stupid lot!

[Keeper of The Kitten]

The pattern hasn't changed. Why people struggle with this I don't know!

It was 51 from the September 2001 registration, followed by 02 for March 2002, then 52, 03, 53, 04 .....09, 59, 10 ...and 60 comes next.

[Keeper of The Kitten]

(And to further clarify, in 2015 the March plate will show 15, the September plate will show 65 - like I said before, add 5 to the first digit, not the second one!)