State revises its plan for new license plates

The state Department of Licensing (DOL) has changed its plan for configuring new seven-character license plates, which will be issued starting this month.

Initially, the DOL said the new plates would have seven characters, consisting of a number, a letter, two more numbers and then three letters (1A11AAA). The DOL said that pattern would meet the needs of law enforcement.

But after fielding complaints from the public that the plate characters would be too hard to remember, the DOL has reconsidered; the new plates will have three letters followed by four numbers (AAA1111).

No new plates with the abandoned configuration were produced, so the change won't result in any additional costs or waste of materials, said the DOL.

The new configuration will yield about 138 million possible combinations.

Neighborhood vehicle-licensing offices around the state will begin issuing the new seven-character plates after exhausting their stock of the current, six-character plates. This means the new plates will be available at different times at different locations around the state.

The overall appearance of the passenger-vehicle plates will not change. They will still feature the standard mountain now in use.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com