Vehicle registration plate

Vehicle registration plate

A vehicle registration plate is a metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies the vehicle within the issuing region's database...

s of Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

have three letters and three or four numbers ranging from 000 to 9999, for serial formats of ABC-123 and ABC-1234.

The first letter indicates the province

Provinces of Ecuador

Ecuador is divided into 24 provinces . The provinces of Ecuador and their capitals are:1 Population as per the census carried out on 2001-11-25In addition, there are three areas within Ecuador that are non-delimited...

 of issue. The second letter, also called the "key letter", identifies the type of license plate.

Province	Letter	Province	Letter	Province	Letter
Azuay	A	Galápagos	W	Pastaza	S
Bolívar	B	Guayas	G	Pichincha Pichincha Province Pichincha is a province of Ecuador located in the northern sierra region; its capital and largest city is Quito. It is bordered by Imbabura & Esmeraldas to the north, Cotopaxi & Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas to the south, Napo & Sucumbíos to the east, and Esmeraldas & Santo Domingo de los...	P
Cañar	U	Imbabura	I	Orellana Orellana Province Orellana is an inland province of Ecuador. The capital is Puerto Francisco de Orellana . It was created on July 30, 1998, from part of Napo Province....	Q
Carchi	C	Loja	L	Sucumbíos Sucumbíos Province Sucumbíos is a province in northeast Ecuador. The capital and largest city is Nueva Loja . It is the fifth largest province in the country, with an area of 18,009 km²...	K
Cotopaxi	X	Los Ríos	R	Tungurahua Tungurahua Province Tungurahua is one of the twenty-four provinces of Ecuador. Its capital is Ambato. The province takes its name from the Tungurahua volcano, which is located within the boundaries of the provinces.-Population:...	T
Chimborazo	H	Manabí Manabí Province Manabí is a province in Ecuador. Its capital is Portoviejo. The province is named after the Manabí people.-Economy:Manabí's economy is based heavily on natural resources such as cacao, bananas, cotton, etc. It's industrial sector is based on Tuna canning, tobacco, and alcoholic beverage production...	M	Zamora-Chinchipe Zamora-Chinchipe Province Zamora Chinchipe is a Province of the Republicof Ecuador, located at the southeastern end of the Amazon Basin, which shares borders with the Ecuadorian provinces of Azuay and Morona Santiago to the north, Loja and Azuay to the west, and with Peru to the east and south...	Z
El Oro El Oro Province El Oro province is the southernmost of Ecuador's coastal provinces. It was named for its historically important gold production. Today it is one of the world's major exporters of bananas. The capital is Machala.-Geography:To the north and east the province has borders with the provinces Guayas,...	O	Morona Santiago Morona-Santiago Province Morona Santiago is a province in Ecuador. The province was established on February 24, 1954. The capital is Macas.- Economy :The provincial economy is industrially unexploited to its potential due to low means of transportation. Its economy relies largely on the tourist sector of the rain forest...	V	Santa Elena	Y
Esmeraldas	E	Napo Napo Province Napo is a province in Ecuador. Its capital is Tena. The province contains the Napo River. The province is low developed without much industrial presence. The thick rainforest is home to many natives that remain isolated by preference, descendents of those who fled the Spanish invasion in the Andes,...	N	Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas	J

The background color of the license plate varies according the key letter and identifies the type of service of the vehicle.

• If the key letter is A, Z or Q, the background color is orange
  Orange (colour)
  The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...
  
   and the vehicle is a bus
  Bus
  A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...
  
   or a taxi
  Taxicab
  A taxicab, also taxi or cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice...
  
  .
• If the key letter is E, the background color is gold
  Gold (color)
  Gold, also called golden, is one of a variety of orange-yellow color blends used to give the impression of the color of the element gold....
  
   and the vehicle is property of the government.
• If the key letter is M, the background color is light green
  Green
  Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
  
   and the vehicle is property of a municipality.
• If the key letter is W, the background color is white
  White
  White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.White light can be...
  
  -silver
  Silver
  Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
  
  and the vehicle is property of the police.

The rest of letters are for private, or particular, vehicles. Their background color is white-silver.