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DGH unveils new design for vehicle license plates

The Directorate General of Highways (DGH) has proposed new designs for car and motorcycle license plates, with all private-use vehicle plates to have four English letters and a three-digit number.

The plates will be available in either white or yellow depending on whether a vehicle is for private use only (white) or commercial use (yellow). Should the legislature approve the proposal, motorists could start replacing their old license plates, free of charge, in 2011.

Current license plate numbers are formed by combining two to three letters with a three or four-digit number and show the city where the vehicle was registered.

Plates will be available in four colors: white, yellow, green and red.

The current license plate design has been in use for 15 years and the maximum variations on the number-letter combinations will be reached in 2011.

To create new license plate numbers, the agency tried reversing the order of letters and four-digit numbers or mixing numbers with letters.

The new design proposal will remove the name of the city where a vehicle was registered, but in that spot another English letter will be used instead. However, the letters “I” and “O” would not be used because they could be mistaken for 1 and 0.

The agency will also drop the red and green base colors because they do not reflect light very well in the dark.

The numbers and letters, though, will come in different colors as well, depending on the registered use of the vehicle.

The directorate is also planning to reduce the thickness of the licence plates to 1mm to make it more difficult to weld two different plates together. The new plate will be made of a special aluminum alloy and will include a security mark and hologram sticker.

The proposed design change will cost about NT$4.7 billion (US$142 million), which will cover the cost of building a new system to identify the plates as well.

About 17 million new license plates will be distributed and the changeover is scheduled to be completed by 2015, when all vehicles must have the new license plate.
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