In Munich, license plates are becoming scarce due to the electric car boom. The solution: There is now a new license plate. In addition to the single, traditional “M” on the license plate for “Munich”, vehicles will in future also roll through the streets of the state capital with “MUC” license plates.
“There are thousands of new license plates up for grabs,” the city announced on Thursday. The new combinations will be available from December 1st – but only for vehicles without seasonal license plates, classic car license plates or E-license plates. The reason: The total length on the license plate may not be more than eight characters.
The new “distinctive symbol”, as it is called in official German, became necessary because of the increasing number of electric vehicles, as the authorities explained. Due to the additional “E” on the license plate, the possible variants of license plates shrank – especially those of the short license plate combinations.
“The supply of short M license plates for electric scooters and motorcycles was running low,” explained district administration officer Hanna Sammüller-Gradl. Online registration has therefore not yet been possible. Thanks to “MUC”, everyone could benefit from online services in the future and bottlenecks in combinations could be prevented.
Until now, when people thought of the three letters “MUC”, they first thought of the airport in Munich, where they stand for the airport code. It is not clear from the official reports whether the association with aviation is intentional in the new license plates.
The new license plate is a much-discussed topic in the Bavarian media. Munich’s second mayor Dominik Krause was quoted on Bayerischer Rundfunk as saying that he would like to see “a lot of creativity in thinking up the possible letter combinations.” He himself presented the idea: “MUC-KE is of course ideal for musicians.”
Sources: dpa / Bayerischer Rundfunk
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