Texas license plate: Standard
Issued today 2012 to today. Standard plates for car, van, truck, and bus, issued by Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDMV). One of 5 Texas license plates.
The Texas Classic (2012, present): TxDMV's stated goal was public-safety legibility, reversing the full-colour graphic base that preceded it.
Format, years and the law
- Format
-
LLL-9999, for exampleABC-1234(L is any letter, 9 any digit)Nothing in ABC-1234 encodes anything: no county, no date, one statewide sequence, and vowels and Q are banned, so a serial can never spell a word. The one legislated character is the separator: a half-inch silhouette of Texas between the letters and numerals.
The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.
- Years issued
- 2012 to today. Still issued.
- Vehicle class
- Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, and bus.
- Colours
-
Characters
#111111 - Size
- 12 × 6 in (305 × 152 mm) · every country's size
- About this plate
- TEXAS CLASSIC, THE CURRENT GENERAL ISSUE. Note what Texas does NOT have: no statutory dimension, no statutory colour, no statutory character cap, no replacement cycle, no geographic encoding, and no published alphabet. The one thing the statute does specify is the silhouette separator, and that turns out to be the normatively interesting fact in the whole file.
- Region code notes
- Texas encodes NOTHING geographic in the serial and never has in the modern era; the county of registration appears on no part of the plate. Contrast Oklahoma, whose 1981-2009 letter prefixes were county-coded (see us-ok).
- How numbers are issued
- strictly sequential. TxDMV, in its HB 718 dealer FAQ: 'The general issue plates MUST be distributed in sequential order.'
- Replacement
- statutory or authority text: TxDMV: 'As of November 1, 2016, the State of Texas no longer requires automatically replacing your plates after 7 years. However, you may apply at your county tax office for replacement plates if your license plates need to be replaced for cosmetic or readability reasons.'. note: TEXAS IS THE COUNTEREXAMPLE TO AAMVA §1.1. Florida legislated 10 years, the top of AAMVA's recommended 7-to-10 band. Texas abolished the concept on 1 November 2016 and now replaces on request only. Voluntary replacement is $6 plus a $0.50 automation fee (§ 504.007(a)(2); TxDMV states the same figures).
Legal basis and sources
- TxDMV: 'Current Design: The Texas Classic. Introduced in July 2012'; 'the first license plate in the country to feature two, high-visibility security threads'; 'As of November 1, 2016, the State of Texas no longer... https://www.txdmv.gov/motorists/license-plates
- § 504.005(a) sole control over design/typeface/color/alphanumeric pattern; § 504.005(c) the half-inch Texas silhouette between letters and numerals, omittable on specially designed plates; § 504.005(d) reflectorized... https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/TN/htm/TN.504.htm
- 'The general issue plates MUST be distributed in sequential order', the progression claim https://www.txdmv.gov/sites/default/files/body-files/ENF%20HB%20718%20FAQ%20Dealer%20Handout%20032125.pdf
- None of these is asserted as sourced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Texas
Before and after
This plate in your app
The series id is us-tx-standard. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of Texas's series:
curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/us-tx \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \ | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "us-tx-standard")'
- Plate image (SVG, sample serial): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/us-tx/us-tx-standard.svg
- Blank template, filled on your side: https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/us-tx/us-tx-standard/template.svg
