District of Columbia · sequential passenger map
District of Columbia license-plate format
Washington, D.C. passenger plates use two letters, a hyphen, and four digits. In this atlas the pattern string uses A for a letter slot and 9 for a digit slot. Other characters are separators that appear on the metal but do not enlarge the combination space.
- Pattern
- AA-9999
- Classes
- 2 letters + 4 digits
- Alphabet size
- 26
- Skipped letters
- none modelled
- Combination count
- 6,760,000
- Model year
- 2013
How the map works
Each A slot independently takes one glyph from ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Each 9 slot takes 0–9. The product of those bases is 6,760,000 — the size of the sequential space taught here. Hyphens, spaces and dots in AA-9999 are display only.
D.C. slogan plates (taxation, end taxation, etc.) rotate around a short AA-9999 sequential serial rather than a three-letter prefix.
Before this map, District of Columbia used AB-1234 slogan rotations. Optional graphics (universities, military, environmental) can look nothing like the sequential passenger die and are not counted in the 6,760,000 figure.
SPR-9932 has three letters and does not match D.C.’s two-letter prefix.
Generated versus issued
A string that fits AA-9999 is in-class. It is not automatically an issued plate. Series can skip blocks, retire numbers, or reserve low digits. This essay never queries a motor-vehicle file. See also generated vs issued.