Let’s have better number plates and numbering system

Many people don’t think much beyond whether it’s a good time to buy an electric vehicle (EV) over a conventional combustion engine car.

Actually, it goes beyond personal decisions.

As a major trading economy, Malaysia is bound to comply with international conventions such as the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or risk having its exports being blacklisted by its major customers.

On a corporate level in Malaysia, companies with international exposure such as Sime Darby Plantations are already declaring compliance to net zero carbon emissions to defend its position as a major exporter of palm oil, while PKT Logistics Sdn Bhd has become a favoured vendor for Fortune 500 companies trading in Malaysia, because of its advanced net zero journey. PKT Logistics declared 2039 as its net zero target, a year ahead of the 2040 target under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change.

Worldwide, the land transport sector is generally regarded as one of the most difficult to decarbonise.

In this respect, Malaysia’s fiscal privileges for EV makers and EV car buyers in the previous budget have gained traction. Sales of zero emission cars drove from the low hundreds in 2022 to more than 10,000 units last year.

More privileges are in the works, with the transport ministry putting out a request for proposals for a new car number plate system to distinguish zero emission vehicles from those from the fossil fuel era.

The terms of reference invited proposals for a vehicle identification system such as an RFID chip embedded in the number plate.

The implication is that once vehicles can be identified as EVs, all sorts of privileges can be accorded, depending on how urgent the government rates its achievement in decarbonising land traffic.

Sources who declined to be identified said more than 10 domestic and international vendors submitted their proposals to the road transport department (JPJ) by the mid-November cut-off date last year.

There are three important observations that can be drawn from an analysis of the ministry’s timely initiative to manage the energy transition to EVs.

Firstly, road safety is a low-hanging fruit. What’s immensely significant is the JPJ’s request that the new number plates be reflective to improve night visibility and curb traffic deaths at night.

Reflective car number plates are currently not mandatory for Malaysia, one of the few countries that does not implement this.

High-reflectivity number plates are probably the easiest and most cost-effective way to increase night visibility, hence road safety.

In fact, police reported that road deaths spiked by 5.6% to 6,433 in 2023 over the previous year. Some of these fatalities involved night-time incidents of cars crashing into stationary commercial vehicles.

Commercial vehicles are required to have reflective stickers affixed to the rear to improve their visibility at night. There’s also the mandatory biannual check at Puspakom facilities where commercial vehicles are checked to see if they have reflective stickers.

Unfortunately, there are many cheap and low-quality reflective stickers for sale and the problem is that they look alike to the naked eye in the daytime. Even if the truck company pays for genuine reflective stickers, it’s possible if not probable that a cheap fake is used while the perpetrator pockets the change.

The only scientific way to measure reflectivity is a high-end meter which costs from RM25,000 (made-in-China) to RM45,000 (made-in-USA). There are also reflectivity meters priced from RM1,000 widely available on the internet but measurements by these will probably not stand up as evidence in a court of law.

Beyond the safety aspects of light green reflective number plates for EVs, one wonders if JPJ will also consider mandating reflective white number plates for all other new vehicles.

It’s such a diminishment of road safety to restrict white number plates to taxis, which are a minute fraction of the population of private cars.

Modernisation is of course the overarching objective of a new number plate system.

JPJ requested suppliers to propose a vehicle number plate system made of recyclable aluminum with a hologram or QR code, that can be integrated with the department’s demerit point system (Kejara).

On the other hand, countries like the Netherlands employ a simple way of sticking a tag on a fixed place on the number plate with the basic function of displaying tax and insurance status.

JPJ also listed requirements to prevent identity theft and ensure the security of the new car number plate system. In China, the world’s biggest car maker and EV market, car number plates are secured to the car using a special one-time-use fastener.

Thirdly is the modernisation of the numbering system itself.

For example, the UK uses a combination of three letters of the alphabet at the end to distinguish one vehicle from another, with the two-digit numbers only serving as an age identifier (year of registration).

Do we need our plates to be alphabetical or number-sequenced to identify the age of our vehicle for the neighbours to know how new our car is?

Will Malaysians, including Sabahans and Sarawakians who have their own numbering system, be able to accept “number plates” which are not number-based anymore, if we start to use letters or a combination of numbers and letters beyond the current system?

And what about number portability? We can transfer our handphone numbers across telcos but we can’t do the same so easily and at zero-cost with our car registration numbers.

Let’s hope that the transport ministry can make this happen for car owners who desire number portability with minimum cost.

Can you look into that possibility please, transport minister Loke Siew Fook? - FMT

The writer can be reached on Facebook at facebook.com/yaminvong.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.