How much you know about Singapore Vehicle Rregistration Plates

In general, all licence plates numbers in Singapore come with the vehicular registration number, suffixed by the official reference in the form of a letter of the alphabet. The number plate has to be made of a reflective plastic or metallic with textured characters made of black (for white-yellow) or white or silver (for black ones).

No standardised typeface is used and all are based on the Charles Wright number plate typeface used in the UK, from thinner looking variants used commonly by SBS buses, taxis and goods vehicles and even the FE-Schrift font used in Germany could be seen rarely on cars though prohibited by LTA.

Typical vehicle plate look like this SFM2305T
• S - Private vehicle (since 1984)
• FM - Alphabetical series
• 2305 - Numerical series
• T - Checksum alphabet (the characters "F", "I", "N", "O", "Q", "V" and "W" are never used as check digits.)

Types of prefixs used in Singapore
• A series: Motorcycles (used until 1980)
• CB series: Company or school buses
• F series: Motorcycles
• FB series: Motorcycles plate started in end of December 2005
• G series: Goods vehicles (class 3) [GA-GZ,GBA..GBB]etc
• P series: Private buses (PA, PB, PC, PH, PZ were used to separate Private bus, Pte Hire etc, subsequently they were not issued and all are issued under PA
• Q series: Company vehicles (QBx, QCx etc, except QX and QY)
• SH series: Taxies or Street Hire vehicles
• W series: Heavy vehicles (class 5) (Currently issuing WD)
• X series: Heavy vehicles (class 5) (Currently issuing XD)
• Y series: Hazardous Cargo Heavy vehicles (class 3/4/5)

Following are controlled for specific types of vehicles
• S/CC: Vehicles of the Consular Corps
• S/CD: Vehicles of the Diplomatic Corps
• S/TE: "Technical Employment" vehicles
• CSS: City Shuttle Service buses
• MID: Singapore Armed Forces vehicles (suffix), originally stood for Ministry of Interior and Defence.
• PU: Pulau Ubin
• QX: Law enforcement-related vehicles operated by government agencies (Singapore Police Force, Singapore Civil Defence Force, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, etc)
• QY: Quasi-Government / Statutory Boards
• RD: Research & Development (like fuel-cell cars, smart car rental cars)
• ROV: Registry of Vehicles, now known as LTA [Land Transport Authority] - Obsolete
• LTA: [Land Transport Authority], formerly known as ROV, Registry of Vehicles
• RU: Restricted Use vehicles, a special category where taxes are not paid. A vehicle with such a licence restricted to certain areas, for example a pushback truck within Singapore Changi Airport grounds or shuttle buses on Sentosa Island.
• SAFPU: Vehicles operated by the Singapore Armed Forces Military Police Command
• SBS: Buses operated by SBS Transit
• SEP: "Singapore Elected President" - The Official Car of The President of the Republic of Singapore (SEP 1)
• SP: "Speaker of Parliament" (SP 1)
• SJ: Supreme Court Justices - With the Chief Justice's car displaying plate number "SJ 1", and so on.
• S1 to S10: "State Cars" - Used for ferrying high government officials or foreign dignitaries during State functions.
• SPF: Police commissioner of the Singapore Police Force (SPF1)
• TIB: Buses operated by SMRT Buses, originally stood for Trans-Island Bus Service (TIBS)
• TP: Motorcycles of the Traffic Police Department, Singapore Police Force
• SZ/SZA: Rental vehicle. No new issues. New Hire/Rental cars use same series as normal cars

Special prefixes were used for specific events
• WTO: For vehicles used during the World Trade Organization's inaugural Ministerial Conference held in Singapore in December 1996
• IOC: For vehicles used during the International Olympic Committee's 117th Session held in Singapore in July 2005
• NDP: For vehicles used during the National Day Parade, 2005, in August 9, 2005.
• SAA: For vehicles used during Asian Aerospace.

Have you seen any of those?