As of: April 9, 2024, 4:57 a.m
By: Janine Napirca
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Bundeswehr license plates differ from conventional, reflective EU license plates due to a different font, the hyphen and the German flag to the left of the letter Y. © Sepp Spiegl/Imago
Have you ever seen vehicles with license plates X or Y? You can find out what these letters stand for here.
In Germany, license plates
usually begin with letters that refer to the
location
. For example, B stands for Berlin, D for Düsseldorf and M for Munich. Larger cities usually limit themselves to one letter, smaller ones have two to three letters that refer to the location. To avoid confusion with other cities, larger places such as the Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Hamburg also have several letters, in this case HB and HH respectively.
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What does the license plate Y stand for?
You may have noticed vehicles with the
license plate Y
on the road . Although these are rare, they do occur. As of today (2022), there are a total of
around 90,000 vehicles
with this license plate. Since 1955,
the
license plate Y has stood for the
Bundeswehr
. According to ADAC, Brigadier General Kurt Vogel decided on this letter at the time because when the Bundeswehr was founded in 1955, all possible combinations had already been assigned and the license plate should only have one letter. No major German city begins with a Y, so the matter was decided.
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According to the ADAC report, the Y license plate differs from other license plates in that it has a different
font
. In addition, the license plates of the Bundeswehr are
not reflective
, the German flag can be seen to the left of the license plate and the Y is followed by a hyphen. If the Y license plate is red, it indicates a vehicle being tested. Normally, the following identification number consists of up to six digits; the Bundeswehr license plate is three digits if the vehicle was purchased in the USA and one digit if the inspectors are from the Army, Air Force or Navy. According to ADAC, for example, Y-1 is the license plate of the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr.
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Who is driving with license plate X?
The license plate X is
much
rarer than the Y license plate. Only
a few hundred vehicles
with this license plate are on German roads. These are vehicles from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or
NATO
for short . According to the report, NATO international headquarters based in Germany are allowed to display X license plates on their official vehicles. According to the ADAC, just like Y license plates, NATO vehicle license plates are also produced in the Bundeswehr's Center for Motor Vehicles.
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