Minnesota · sequential passenger map
Minnesota license-plate format
Minnesota passenger plates use three letters, a hyphen, and three 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
- AAA-999
- Classes
- 3 letters + 3 digits
- Alphabet size
- 26
- Skipped letters
- none modelled
- Combination count
- 17,576,000
- Model year
- 2009
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 17,576,000 — the size of the sequential space taught here. Hyphens, spaces and dots in AAA-999 are display only.
Minnesota’s 10,000 Lakes plates kept a short hyphenated serial. Three digits on the right means SPR-9932’s four-digit tail does not fit.
Before this map, Minnesota used ABC-123 county and lake graphics. Optional graphics (universities, military, environmental) can look nothing like the sequential passenger die and are not counted in the 17,576,000 figure.
SPR-993 would be in-class; SPR-9932 is one digit too long.
Generated versus issued
A string that fits AAA-999 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.