Guangzhou Releases Private Number Plates

Today, the city of Guangzhou, China, will officially begin to release private number plates. On Saturday (October 4th), motorists began reserving their plates to avoid the long queues that are expected today.

Guangzhou, the capital of southern China's Guangdong Province (also known as Canton), has a current population of 6 million and around 1,800 of the city's motorists have already put their names down for a personalised registration.

The process of registering takes less than half an hour and car owners are required only to produce personal dates to secure a registration number. According to the vehicle administative station of Guangzhou, those who did not take the time to put their names down at the weekend will today be turned away due to local authorities stating that no more than 1,355 plates are to be released per day.

The director of the local vehicle administrative station, Li Bin, explained that there are two styles of personalised number plates available. Motorists may choose from the 'four numbers and a suffix letter' category, ranging from '0001 E' to '9999 Z' or from a range of one prefix letter, three numbers and a suffix letter ('A 001 A' to 'Z 999 Z').

Li Bin also revealed that desirable car registrations that include the same third and fourth digits, such as 33, 66,99, will be sold separately at auction.

With over 700,000 possible combinations available, motorists should be able to find a suitable plate. And, with another extention expected to be initiated shortly, the number of plate options for each car owner will rise from five to ten.

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