California has run out of license plate combinations and this is what it's having to do now

California is running out of license plate combinations.

After nearly five decades, California has officially exhausted the familiar 1ABC234-style license plate sequence.

This means the DMV has to find new ways to assign license plates.

And it gets worse, because they ran out of another combination as well.

People in California are clearly registering new cars at an impressive rate

California has also run out when it comes to the ‘1AAA000’ sequence after assigning the 9ZZZ999 plate in 2026.

So now California is using a new NNNAAAN configuration, which is basically the reverse of the previous system.

According to the DMV, the replacement configuration should provide another 40 years of combinations based on historical issuance rates.

Like other jurisdictions, California excludes the letter I, O and Q, because they’re to similar to the numbers 1 and 0.

Every country is different, and it often doesn’t make much sense

When it comes to license plate layouts, it’s a free-for-all out there.

In theory, most countries use a combination of numbers and letters, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

In countries like the Russian Federation and France, for example, there’s a two or three-figure number on the side that indicates the specific region.

But we bet employees of the local DMV couldn’t make sense of it.

In theory, at least initially, the number used to be assigned in alphabetical order based on the name of the Department.

But that hasn’t been the case for a while.

Example? Paris is 75 but Sarthe (where the Le Mans circuit is) is 72.

Below and above: license plates in France, 60 is Oise (where Paris-Beavauis airport is) and 84 is Vaucluse, not so far from the French Riviera

Other countries integrate figures in the license plate number – not on the side – to indicate the year and/or ‘age’ of the car.

Jeremy Clarkson’s Range Rover, for example, is a ’57’ car, which tells us it is a 2000s car.

Why? No clue.

Some countries are working on this

Some countries in Europe are gradually unifying their systems.

Italy, France, and Albania – for example – are now using the same system: letter-letter-number-number-number-letter-letter.

They started with AA000AA and then it’s sequential, which makes it a bit better, but it’s still a little convoluted.

There’s something else that makes it convoluted.

In principle, most countries allow you to personalize the license plate.

However, there are countries where you can do pretty much what you want (UAE, US, UK to an extent) and countries where you still need to stick to the layout, which means your options are limited.

It’s all very C0NFU51NG.