Thai vehicle license plates

Thailand's vehicle registration plates are issued by the Department of Land Transport (DLT) of the Ministry of Transport. They must be displayed on all motorized road vehicles (with the exception of royal-, police- and military-owned vehicles), as required by the Motor Vehicle Act, B.E. 2522 (1979 CE) and the Land Transport Act, B.E. 2522. The plates vary in design, colors and dimensions according to the type of vehicle, but usually display a registration number (usually a two-character letter or numerical prefix and a four-digit number) and the vehicle's province of registration. Specifications are given in Ministry of Transport regulations. Current style started in 1975 for most vehicle types, but with small changes in 1997, and 1997 for motorcycles.

All license plates are rectangular, with variations in size and color according to the class of the vehicle. Most plates prominently display the vehicle registration ID, which usually consists of Thai letters and a number string. The province of registration is shown below the ID. The letters are embossed, and all plates must also be embossed with a seal bearing the letters "ขส". The current designs are regulated by the notification of the Department of Land Transport dated B.E. 2554 (2011 CE) for buses and trucks, and by the ministerial regulation issued B.E. 2554 for other motor vehicles.

Plates for cars, vans, pick-up trucks, motorized tricycles, trailers, road rollers, tractors and agricultural vehicles follow the same design. They are 15 by 34 centimetres (5.9 by 13.4 in) in size, with a colored and embossed outline. The registration ID consists of two series letters followed by a serial number string of up to four digits, from 1 to 9999, without leading zeros, e.g. "กข 1" or "กข 1234". A leading digit may be added in front of the two letters if the letter pool has been exhausted, as is the case in Bangkok since 2012, giving the format "1กข 1234". Due to the case, the new plates, since 2012, have reduced text size, to keep the plate size. The province of registration is displayed in Thai underneath the registration ID. The colors of the text and background depend on the type of vehicle, and are given in following table:

Since 2003, certain serial numbers in each series are made available for auction. These include single-digit numbers (1); twin (11), triplet (111) and quadruplet (1111) numbers, round thousands (1000); straight three-digit (123) and four-digit (1234) numbers; and pairs of two like numbers (1122, 1212, 1221). Such IDs are accompanied by vanity plates with a special background image customized for each province. The auction plates, also called Super Number (Thai: ทะเบียนรถเลขสวย, rtgs: thabian rot lek suai, lit. meaning "beautiful number car registration plate") by the Department of Land Transport (DLT), are only in private passenger car type until 2014, when private pick-up and private van auction plates are made available.

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