I believe the age of a car can be told by the number plate but I might be wrong.

 

What simple information is shown in vehicle registration plate codes? 

 

What for example is the significance of the other "fields" - the initial numeral where there is one, the Thai letters & the 3 or 4 digit code? 

License plates can be transferred from one vehicle to another, so it doesn't tell you anything about the age of the vehicle

Depending on the type of license plate you can see for which purpose the vehicle was registered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Thailand

The list on Wikipedia is not complete, at least army license plates are missing, maybe more than that

As I understand it, they just go through the Thai Alphabet with numbers... 

 

Thus, 2 Thai Letters in alphabetical order, then then numbers from 1 up to 9999.

 

More recently all the alphabet number combinations have been used up, thus an additional numbers been added before the 2 Thai Letter number combination.

 

Its a lot more easy to tell a more recent registration based on the first number.. i.e. about 8 or 9 now I think. 

 

 

Is that right, ok, thanks

 

Many countries can have personalised plates sold on but they are forced to have general codes for the mass registration of vehicles with codes on area & age at least when the plate is first issued.

Ok, thanks, I was wondering. I've heard 8s & 9s are recent, it just wouldn't work to have no pattern, I don't think.

8 minutes ago, 503726 said:

Ok, thanks, I was wondering. I've heard 8s & 9s are recent, it just wouldn't work to have no pattern, I don't think.

Most types of license plates have the province where the car is registered printed on them.

So for example the license plate "1GG 1111" actually exists 77 times, one time in each province.

This means that maybe one province is already handing out license plates starting with 9, while another province is only at 2.

But if somebody moves to another province, takes his old car with him to the new province, and changes its registration to the new province (actually required by law, but nobody cares about it), then he would get a one of these new license plates for his maybe 10 year old car.

Plus you can request a certain number (personalized plate)...............for a price. Saw a Porsche Panamera the other day from Bangkok. Couldn't make out the letters but only had one number which was a 1. Wonder what that cost? Many guys in the car club I am in have the year of the car as the number or the size of the engine as a license plate number. This Camaro is running a big block 454 cu in engine. 

 

 

50 minutes ago, Rdrokit said:

This Camaro is running a big block 454 cu in engine.

And letters transcribe to GM (mother company).

Highest price I remember from an auction of vanity numbers cost 25 million Baht.

Even two equal digits are sold for a price (..11, ..22 etc.).

8888 and 9999 cost a fortune.

 

On 7/13/2019 at 11:55 PM, richard_smith237 said:

More recently all the alphabet number combinations have been used up, thus an additional numbers been added before the 2 Thai Letter number combination.

For Bangkok mainly.

Here they use a leading digit 1 for motorcycles since a while.

I doubt that this is standardized.

For the rest there is no leading digit.

 

Leading digit was introduced in Bangkok first.

And I wonder when they will run out of leading digit/2 letters/4 digits for cars again.

I think I have seen leading digit "8" already.

Will they ever clean up this mess and modernize their plate chaos?

No, they won't.

Right now in BAngkok they have

กx 8 XXXX

 

I think soon they number goes up to 9 and then maybe ขx1 (Koh Kai) will start.