Motor
vehicle licence
plates in Singapore are
administered by the Land
Transport Authority.
In general, all licence plates numbers in Singapore
come with the vehicular registration number, suffixed by the
official reference in the form of a letter of the alphabet. Two
colouring schemes are in use: the black on white(front) with black
on yellow(rear) scheme or the older white on black scheme. The
number plate has to be made of a reflective plastic or metallic
with textured characters made of black (for white-yellow) or white
or silver (for black ones). No standardised typeface is used and
all are based on the Charles
Wright number plate typeface used in the UK, from thinner
looking variants used commonly by SBS buses, taxis and goods
vehicles, and even the FE-Schrift font
used in Germany can sometimes, though rarely, be seen - though this
is prohibited by LTA.[1]
Private car licence plate numbers began in the early
1900s when Singapore was one of the fourStraits
Settlements, with a single prefix 'S', then adding a suffix
letter S 'A' to S 'Y', but skipping a few like S 'H' and S 'Z'
(reserved for taxis and buses), S 'D' (reserved for municipal
vehicles), and S 'G' for goods vehicles large and small. No changes
were made when Singapore became independent in 1965. Later, the
suffix was added. Previously there was no suffix, for example,
SS1234, as in the vehicle
registration plates of Malaysia.
When 'S' was exhausted at SY, in January 1972, Private
cars started with E, Motorbikes with A and Goods Vehicles under 3
tonnes with Y. E was followed by EA, EB with the letters EC in 1973
up to EZ. From 1984, the "S" series of number plates was launched
again, but now with two serial suffix letters, starting from SBA.
Currently, as of this writing, the SKD series is in issue for
private cars.
Other classes of vehicles have registration numbers
beginning with specific letters:
In addition, the following are controlled for specific
types of vehicles, including:
Special prefixes were used for specific events, such
as:
The checksum letter is calculated by converting the
letters into numbers, i.e. where A=1 and Z=26, potentially giving 7
individual numbers from each registration plate. However, only two
letters of the prefix are used in the checksum, for now, so the
first letter is discarded for a three-letter prefix. SBA 1234 would
therefore give 2, 1, 1, 2, 3 and 4 (note that "S" is discarded).
For three-digit numbers, a "0" is appended to the front of the
number. Each individual number is then multiplied by 6 fixed
numbers (14, 2, 12, 2, 11, 1). These are added up, then divided by
19. The remainder corresponds to one of the 19 letters used (A, Y,
U, S, P, L, J, G, D, B, Z, X, T, R, M, K, H, E, C), with "A"
corresponding to a remainder of 0. In the case of SBA 1234, the
final letter should be a G.
There was some speculation as to whether the Singapore
government would continue the SDZ series to its next logical
sequence - i.e. SEA and then on to SEY etc.. Apparently the
government decided to adopt the policy of using no vowels in the
middle digit to avoid meaningful 3 letter word combinations. Indeed
there was never an SA sequence issued (the S—sequence started with
SBA), although this was because the West Coast
Division of Sabah state
in Malaysia has been
using the SA sequence.
The Land Transport Authority has announced they may
begin implementing the use of personal registration licence plates
(Vanity plates) as
early as late 2007, and are currently working on the details of the
plan. These licence plates may take up to 12 characters compared to
the current eight.[2] For
now, there is a thriving trade in the sale of number plates that
have significant digits (i.e. lucky numbers) or
letter combinations like SGD. Full vanity plates are not available
in Singapore, only the number combination like Germany.
Vehicles registered as "Off-peak Vehicles",
affectionately known as "Weekend Cars", pay a cheaper road tax as
compared to normal private cars, although COE charges apply as
usual. They display number plates with white characters on a red
background. These vehicles are only allowed to run on the roads in
Singapore after office hours (7pm-7am) on weekdays, full day on
Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays.
In the case where owners of private vehicles choose to
run on the roads on weekdays during office hours, they are required
to buy an e-licence for $20 either online or through major post
offices. Car owners have up to 24 hours on the following day to
purchase the e-licence. Failure to do so first time offenders may
be fined up to $5,000 for failing to display a valid day coupon or
using an invalid day coupon, and fined up to $10,000 for using an
altered day coupon when the OPC is used during the restricted
hours.
Off-peak vehicles pay a relatively lower road tax (a
discount of up to $500) as compared to other private vehicles and
are also given rebate of $17,000 which can be offset against COE
and ARF.
Even so, the majority of the people in Singapore do not
use Off-peak vehicles.
Light Goods Vehicles and Goods Passenger Vehicles uses
the G series prefix. From G to GA through GZ, and the GBA, current
issue is GBB.
