The old series of 3 numbers and 3 letters allowed for 10 x 10 x10 x 26 x 26 x 26 combinations, a total of 17,576,000 combinations.
The new series of 3 numbers, 2 letters and 1 number allows for 10 x10 x 10 x 26 x 26 x 10 combinations, a total of 6,760,000 combinations, less than 40% of the old series.
The old series is still available at the same time as the new, as are many other patterns of six alpha-numeric characters. There is nothing to stop using all possible combinations of six numbers or letters which would be ~2.1 billion, allowing for certain combinations that are confusing (zero and letter O) or deemed obscene to not be used. Using two subsets now doesn’t prevent you from using others later. I think it likely this was all worked out years ago and there is no chance at all of running out of unique plates.
If you move the location of the number in the final three integers, then you will get another 3 series making it 3 x 6,760,000.or about 20 million combinations. This is what the Qld government plans to do…
I don’t know why they don’t use retired numbers as there would potentially be millions they could use and would last for many years.
Alternatively, do what they do in some other countries…assign a plate to an individual and the plate is transferred to a new car when bought.
Mr Z’s family resisted returning the old plates when they retired and parked up their old cars. They resisted requests until the Department stopped asking. The Court House would just cut the old plates in half and I don’t remember any paperwork. That might be partly responsible for not using retired numbers - the plates might still be out there…
He also had a sentimental attachment to a particular motorcycle number plate and paid the rego on the wreck for 20 years to keep the number. 30 years later and it is still a wreck.
I solved the issue by buying the plates he wanted to keep through the Personalised Plates scheme. If you register a car with them you get a discount. He still hopes to get some of his ancient marques roadworthy again, but we don’t have the money and he is running out of years.
Yes. I did overlook that but there is still little more in total than the old series, so with ever increasing rates of registrations, it will still be exhausted in a much shorter time frame.
Perhaps a 7 digit system like WA and SA use despite them being the the states with the second and third lowest populations in Australia.
Some 50 years ago, a draftsman where I was working had a Renault with WA number A4. It was the first custom plate I had ever seen and I imagine that it would be worth a small fortune now.
Chuckles - maybe at some point they will be implemented by Bluetooth, NFC, or a pervasive open short range Wifi and the rego will be the vehicles MAC address.
Or simply the VIN.
Seventeen characters ought to be enough. There could be some minor practical problems though, a number plate needs other properties other than being unique.
Excuse me sir, but are your sure your car is a Maserati manufactured in Uzbekistan in 1923?
A Sydney lawyer has finally lost his fight against having his personalised number plates on his Lamborghini cancelled and now has to find an acceptable alterenative.
I checked out a suitable new plate for him, RMSSUX, but it is not available.
Perhaps he should register it in Qld where TMRSUX is available accordingly to the PPQ website.
It took some 20 years for Qld plates to go from 000 FAA to 999 ZZZ. This series used 16 different letters as the first letter for each plate, so an average of around 15 months per letter.
Yesterday, I saw a woman attaching her new plates outside our local TMR office. The number was ??? AR9 so Qld is already around 70% of the way through the first letter, “A”, in a mere 3 months.
A this rate, this entire current series will be used up in less than 7 years.
Perhaps we need to attach Rego numbers to a driver’s licence. When you first register a vehicle you are allocated a number, if you change vehicles the rego number is moved from the old to the new with a date of changeover (so no penalties accrue past that date from others driving).
If you cease to own a vehicle the number remains attached to your licence but unused. Personalised, lifetime availability and if you own multiple cars the regos all link to your licence. Loss of licence could be dealt with by either issuing a new number on recovery of the licence or by still linking to the suspended/cancelled licence number to keep vehicles registered to the person. I am sure there could be other ways to reduce the churn.
Most car dealerships (new and used) stockpile a number of plates for use for vehicles (possibly similar to the number within their lots…likewise each DTMR regional office. If they all had a dozen or more (I suspect that DTMR could hold hundreds at a time), very quickly the number waiting to be added to circulation is quite large.
I also saw ??? AL4 and ??? AL7 the previous morning so a fairly good spread locally.
In getting to this figure you are assuming the plates are issued sequentially which isn’t so. Even if it was there are plenty more fish in the sea as the current series is a small subset of the total number of plates possible with that many characters You seem determined to show lack of planning and that they will run out of plates. It is possible for large organisations and government agencies to plan ahead you know.
Some might suggest this is the very reason public servants exist.
No plan is ever perfect. No politician is every satisfied. No voter is ever convinced.
Best that any plan is never quite perfect. Leaving room for improvement provides infinite opportunity to fine tune it to suit the needs of the day.
Minister?
… some of us would run out of room on the licence 
Fully agree. In my experience, people with personalised plates (other than businesses) are like those people whose photos are all selfies - they scream “LOOK AT ME!”
indeed @PhilT
Plate designs with colour combinations and/or paint types readable by human eyes but not by technology (analogue or digital, still or video) - although these proposed designs may ‘pass the human test’ (quite possibly done by the human designer, quite possibly done indoors) should they fail the outdoors on a moving vehicle in various light/angle/speed conditions then they fail.
