Vehicle Registration Plates of Indonesia - Registration Plate Design - Design Convention

Design Convention

Except for some special cases (see below), every vehicle license plate in Indonesia follows the following format: LL NNNN LL where "L" are letters of the Latin alphabet, and "N" and numbers from "0" to "9" (note that the first number is never a "0"). The first single or double letters denote the area of registration. This is followed by numbers, which can range from one to four digits. This is then followed by one or two letters although they may be optional. For example: D 1028 EB is a vehicle registered in Bandung region, because it begins with letter D. A smaller numbers being added to the bottom of the plate, indicating the month and year where the plate will expire, so the owner must repay the tax to get the new one every five years,(for example, "09-10" means "September, 2010". With these numbers, you can indicate the car's age, so for the example above, the car would have been bought in September 2005.

A new format was recently introduced which have three ending letters, due to increase of motorized vehicle numbers. At first, this format is used for motorcycles and since July 2008 until present, for cars in Jakarta and its surrounding areas only, which are Tangerang, Bekasi and Depok. In the last three letters of this new format, the first letter divides the Jakarta area into sub areas. For example, The first letter of the whole number plate for Jakarta vehicles is "B". For example, "B1234GH" indicates it's from Jakarta. But under the new system, the B indicator is not enough. The new system is E.g. "B1234DGH". There are now three ending letters. The last two letters are random, but the first letter out of the three dictates the area in Jakarta. D is Depok, T is Tangerang, B is Bekasi, S is Jakarta Selatan(Southern Jakrta) and P is Jakarta Pusat(Central Jakarta)