North Carolina’s DMV is suspending its plan to replace old license plates. Here’s why.
The N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles has suspended a five-month-old effort to replace old license plates because of a scarcity of aluminum.
The DMV began replacing all license tags that are at least 6 years old starting Jan. 1, following a mandate approved by the General Assembly and signed into law two years ago. Up until then, the state had set no time limit for replacing a license plate, as long as it remained readable and in decent shape.
But the agency says Corrections Enterprises, which makes the plates at the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh, doesn’t have enough aluminum on hand to keep up the heightened demand. The DMV says it usually issues 400 to 500 new license plates a day, but including replacement plates the agency is sending out 10 times that many.
“The move is being taken to help ensure there is enough material to produce first-time plates,” the agency said in a press release Monday, citing a “world-wide shortage of aluminum.”
The DMV says Corrections Enterprises has produced more than 640,000 replacement plates so far this year, and the agency expects to need another 1.4 million by the end of the year. Though it expects another shipment this month, Corrections Enterprises has only enough aluminum on hand to make about 160,000 plates, according to the DMV.
The DMV said it doesn’t know when it will resume issuing replacement plates. If the suspension continues until late in the year, the agency says it’s likely the program won’t resume until 2022.
The law requires the plates to be replaced every seven years. In practice, the DMV was replacing any plate that will turn 7 in the coming year.
Under the program, vehicle owners are told they will get a new plate when their registration comes up for renewal. The replacements were automatically mailed to people who renewed online or by mail, while those who renewed in person at a license plate agency office received their plates then.
The replacement effort began with standard license plates for cars and motorcycles. The DMV had planned to begin swapping out old specialty license plates, including commercial, farm, taxi and personalized plates, in 2022. That effort would be delayed until 2023 if the replacement program remains suspended through this year.
This story was originally published May 3, 2021 at 5:03 PM.
