Why are license plates starting with 9 not common?

[DelJackson]

The main reason why license plates starting with 9 are not common is because traffic police license plates typically start with 9. Here are the specific details: 1. The letter following the license plate number indicates a city or district within a province or municipality directly under the central government. The front of the license plate usually features a Chinese character representing a specific province or municipality, followed by a letter. 2. License plates are mandatory for all vehicles to legally operate on the road. Driving without a license plate is illegal, and vehicles caught doing so will be stopped by traffic police. 3. Official license plates are made of metal, with commonly seen colors including blue, green, and yellow.

[DeDaniella]

Actually, license plates starting with 9 are quite rare, which is related to the license plate issuance rules. In the early days, license plates were purely numerical and issued sequentially, starting from 00001. Plates starting with 0 were the most common, followed by those starting with 1 to 8 in descending order. Plates starting with 9 were only issued in bulk when a city's vehicle count was approaching 90,000, but this period was very brief. Once a city's vehicle count exceeded 100,000, the vehicle management office would switch to alphanumeric license plates (e.g., Zhe A1B234), effectively skipping most of the 9-starting issuance phase. Additionally, some vehicle management offices reserve 9-starting plates for special vehicles, making them even harder for ordinary car owners to obtain. According to local vehicle management data I checked, a decade ago, 9-starting plates accounted for only about 3% of the total issued.

[DiCora]

I've been observing license plates for over a decade and noticed that plates starting with 9 are indeed rare. This is mainly related to the numbering system. The DMV issues plates sequentially starting from 00001, and it's only when a city reaches around 80,000 issued plates that 9-starting plates appear. However, with the rapid growth of urban vehicles nowadays, before reaching 90,000 pure-number plates, the vehicle count often exceeds 100,000. The DMV then switches directly to alphanumeric plates, such as the new format like Jing C·123D. There's also a belief that 9 represents the largest number, and some people prefer auspicious numbers for license plates, similar to premium phone numbers, leading to concentrated selection of plates like 888 or 999. In reality, most vehicles I see on the road with 9-starting plates are older cars registered before 2005.

[DiColeman]

It's actually quite normal to see fewer license plates starting with 9. You see, license plates are issued sequentially, and the earliest batch of vehicles all had plates starting with 0 or 1. By the time it got to 9, the DMV had already started issuing new-style plates with letters. Nowadays, eight out of ten cars on the road have license plates with English letters, and purely numeric ones are inherently rare. Plus, the total number of license plates is fixed, so the proportion starting with each digit should be roughly the same. However, 9 is the last digit, and plates starting with 9 are issued in large quantities only when the number resources are nearly exhausted, hence the slightly lower total count. The last time I went to the DMV to choose a plate, I could hardly find any purely numeric plates starting with 9 in the system.

[LylaDella]

From the perspective of license plate development history, when the 92-style license plates were first introduced, they were all pure five-digit numbers. Initially, plates were issued from 00001 to 10000, all starting with 0, and this phase lasted the longest. As the number of vehicles increased, plates starting with 1 through 8 gradually appeared. The issuance period for plates starting with 9 coincided with the explosive growth phase of vehicles, but they were quickly replaced by alphanumeric license plates starting in 2002. Currently, new energy vehicles still use alphanumeric plates, such as AD12345. Therefore, pure numeric license plates starting with 9 can be seen as transitional products, naturally existing in smaller quantities. Based on my observations, in the used car market, license plates starting with 9 are mainly found on vehicles registered between 2000 and 2005.

[BennettFitz]

The allocation of license plate numbers follows certain rules. The vehicle management office issues plates sequentially, starting with 0, then moving to 1, and so on. When plates starting with 9 are issued, it indicates that the local vehicle count has reached nearly 100,000. However, once the number of vehicles exceeds 100,000, the license plate rules change to a mix of letters and numbers, and pure numeric plates starting with 9 are no longer used. Nowadays, new energy vehicles on the road follow formats like AD12345. Additionally, some people intentionally avoid the number 9, considering it an unlucky odd number. In reality, statistically, each starting digit should have a similar distribution. However, plates starting with 0 were issued for the longest time in the early stages, resulting in the largest quantity. On the other hand, plates starting with 9 were only issued for a short period before the new rules took effect, making them relatively rare.