On June 16, 2025, ICBC officially released a Bulletin (which they back dated to June 9, 2025, being a few days before the new series was spotted on the road) announcing the new A00-0AA serial as well as some other changes!
Confirming what had already been spotted in the wild by motorists, the new serial would first appear on the BC Parks Porteau Cove base, with regular plates being switched to the new series by August of 2025.
It was also announced that passenger plates will be begin to display some of the forbidden letters first excluded from use back in 1970, namely; 'U', 'Y' and 'Z', which should increase the number of available combinations by approximately 30% (e.g. from 8,000,000 combinations under the 2014 series to 10,400,000 combinations)!
For the hardcore number crunchers amongst us, this means the 'A' block of plates (e.g. “A00-0AA” to “A99-9ZZ”) will likely comprise 450,000 to 475,000 combinations before the 'B' block is issued (likely some time in June of 2026).
The Corporation also seems to be unduly fixated on retaining 6-character serials for reasons that are un-clear to us here at BCpl8s.ca. This objective was repeated numerous times in the Bulletin, such as the following statements:
- All regular BC plates will remain six characters with the same design, reflectivity, and materials, making them scannable as usual;
- By altering the pattern of number and letter positions for each licence plate type, ICBC was able to increase available licence plate combinations using the same number of characters;
- All BC licence plate types consist of no more than six characters; and
- To ensure there is sufficient inventory of unique licence plate numbers for the next twenty years, character pattern updates are planned for 16 licence plate types.
For context, limiting license plate serials to a maximum of 6-characters is considered sub-optimal (not best practice), as leading to less undesirable outcomes (e.g. having to use irregular number-letter combinations that are hard to remember) and typically indicative of some other problem (e.g. under-investment in information technologies).
It is also noted that the Corporation only recently “successfully transitioned from seven to eight-digit driver licence (DL) numbers providing more than 240 years of available DL numbers” (in 2023), so is aware of the benefits of adding an extra character to an existing registration serial.
On the first point, consider that British Columbia along with Newfoundland are the only provinces in Canada that have not yet moved to issuing 7-character license plates. Even Prince Edward Island (PEI), which registers only 120,000 vehicles a year in comparison to the 2,800,000 vehicles registered annually in British Columbia, has been issuing 7-character licence plates since the 1980s (on its personalized base).
On the second point, the AAMVA has consistently advocated for the use of:
alpha and/or numeric characters [that] are displayed on motor vehicles to allow for quick and efficient methods of identifying the motor vehicle and motor vehicle registrant. License plates should be designed to optimize legibility to the human eye and for license plate readers (LPRs). The ability of motor vehicle agency employees, law enforcement, and citizens to easily identify a license plate number is fundamental to accurate vehicle registration data creation, maintenance, and retrieval.
While one can read it into this quote what they wish, the more unusual the pattern of letters and numbers on a license plate, the harder it is going to be for people, such as witnesses (pedestrians and other drivers) and law enforcement to recall and report accurately on the number.
Consider the case of Washington State, which proposed to introduce a new 7-character serial format in 2009 that was to be structured as follows: 1A11AAA.
Within months, this was quickly walked back after the state started receiving feedback from law enforcement agencies who felt that a
“AAA1111” format would be easier to remember.
What this meant is that, instead of 350 million possible
combinations under the “1A11AAA” format, the State would have only 138 million possible combinations using “AAA-1111” - but still enough to supply motorists for decades to come.
On the final point, it has long been known that the computer system ICBC inherited from the Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) - when the former was rolled into the Corporation in the 1990s - was a major impediment to modernizing the issuance of license plates. The same is true in Newfoundland where the computer system used by that province's Motor Registration department dates to 1984 and, as a result, “is so old that the staff can’t make it
happen” (“it” being anything new).
The Corporation's so-called “Transformation 2014” (or “Transformation Program”) detailed at the top of this page was supposed to have solved the information technology issues preventing the issuance of 7-character plates. The 2013 Request for Quotations (RFQ) to manufacturers interested in supplying the province with license plates hinted at this (12 years ago!!), stating the size and design of license plates was to accommodate the following:
Each plate must allow for up to 8 characters to be placed along its midline which
includes the BC flag logo as one character space, including alphanumeric series,
flag, [and] dash ... ICBC currently uses 7 character spaces but may require 8 at a
future date.
As we here at BCpl8s.ca have suspected for a long-time, the underlying problem preventing the move to 7-character plates (and other plate innovations) can likely be traced back to the transfer of responsibility for license plate issuance from the MVB to ICBC in the mid 1990s. As an insurance company, first-and-foremost, license plates are peripheral to what the Corporation considers its principal mandate to be.
And, as an insurance company, the Corporation is inherently conservative and focused on controlling costs to ensure profitability and long-term solvency by managing risk and minimizing claims-related expenses. This is especially so in relation to its license plate mandate, with ICBC regularly reminding anyone reading its Annual Reports that:
The Corporation is also responsible for collecting and remitting in full to the Province of B.C. all ... vehicle-related fees for acquiring and distributing licence plates including permits and other fees and fines. These collections are not revenue to the Corporation. The costs associated with the licensing and compliance activities conducted on behalf of the Province of B.C. are borne by the Corporation.
Our unsolicited advice to the Corportation is; you don’t get to pick and choose among your statutory obligations, so please consider investing more on innovative approaches to the issuance and sale of license plates!