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Thais May Be Able ‘Name’ Their Cars With New Rule That Allows More Than 2 Characters On License Plates

Thailand allows custom license plates


You can now have your car’s license plate named after you, your pet or anyone you want. The Department of Land and Transport (DLT)’s Deputy Director-General, Mrs. Jinthira Burutpat, confirmed that car owners can now customise letters on license plates for vehicles that seat less than seven people. 

While this red-plated policy could pave ways for millions of nameplate possibilities, the DLT assured the public that any profanities or allusions to political statements would not be allowed.


What to do if you want to customise your license plate


As of now, the policy is in its finalisation stage by the DLT. According to Matichon, the DLT is considering auctioning custom license plates to the public and using the revenue to further develop road safety. 

Thai license plate
With the new DLT policy, we can customise our car’s license plate.
Original image credit: Thairath

People will get to suggest names and letters for the license plate; however, the final number combination will be auto-generated by the DLT. You can buy the custom license plate directly from the DLT or bid for a custom license plate with “lucky” numbers at one of the ever-occurring auctions.

The guidelines for license plate customisation are as follows:

  1. A custom license plate is for vehicles that seat no more than seven people only.
  2. You may use more than two alphabets, including vowels, consonants and tone marks on the license plate.
  3. Words or names that have negative meanings and that can cause harm to third-parties, including profanities or related to a person, religious characters or political agendas are strictly prohibited. 

A mountain-high price tag


While customisable license plates are pending government approval, Mr. Jirut Wisanjit, Director General of The Department of Land Transport gave us an estimate on the price of the custom license plate.

“As of now, the price is estimated to be ฿1,000,000 (~USD 33,288) per plate,” said Mr. Wisanjit. “The policy is expected to be enforced somewhere in the middle of this  year.”


A lower-price alternative


While the price tag for a custom name price tag could cost you another car, we have an alternative solution for anyone who wishes to nickname their beloved four-wheels: bumper stickers. Yes, the good old fashion bumper sticker allows you to customise any name in any colour you want for your car. 

bumper sticker
You can use one of these stickers to nickname your car.
Image credit: Pinterest

Not only you can put on names, but you can also put on quotes as well. Just make sure you choose a nice word or sentence up there to reduce the risk of receiving multiple beep-beeps from fellow drivers. 

Read more about interesting happenings in Thailand here:


Featured image adapted from: Thairath

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