Australian Emoji Number Plates

While our Department for Transport decides on whether to introduce green number plates for low emission vehicles, drivers down under are personalising their plates in an altogether different way.

In Queensland, more than 1600 people have purchased plates with emoji designs since their launch in 2019.

Initially, only five designs were offered. These were the smile, the wink, the laugh out loud, the sunglasses, and the heart-eye emojis. The face with the sunglasses proved to be the most popular, with heart-eyes coming in second and the winking face third.

This year, to celebrate the new plates’ popularity, four new designs were added to the available emoji range: starry-eyes, the tongue poked out, the hug, and the thumbs up.

Bill Potts, president of the Queensland Law Society, expressed a wish that the emojis could change according to the driver’s mood, smiles becoming frowns when the traffic gets bad!

While they may make a plate more memorable, the emojis are entirely decorative only and do not make up any part of the registration itself, nor are they recognised by Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology.

What do you think? 🤔

Do emojis on number plates put a smile on your face? 😄

Or do they get the big thumbs down? 👎