The latest car plate price came out. The lowest price for car plate is 43000 RMB and average price for the plate is 43300 RMB (5216 USD). 4800 plates entered the bid.
As you may know, Shanghai uses the bidding system to determine the price for private car plates. There is no base price. So by theory, if everyone bid 100 RMB for the plates, the first 4800 bidders will win the plate at 100 RMB. Of cause, this never happens since there will be much more bidders than the number of the car plate.
It was 38000 RMB on August 24, 2003
I didn’t Join the Bidding
I chose to get a foreign province car plate at last. I gave my new car to the car dealer, who drove my car to the nearby city, Hangzhou. It is 240 km away. They helped to get the plate there. My new car plate is
|
浙A-2N137 |
It cost 3500 RMB.
Limitations
There are some limitations to use a car with foreign plate in Shanghai. For example, I cannot use the elevated highway in rush hours and on certain roads. I don’t care too much.
I think it’s a wise decision not to get the plate. The elevated highway from what I remembered was pretty nice, but if you get stuck in traffic up there, you are STUCK! Most of the other streets and roads were in pretty good shape, except there is always some sort of contruction going on. Not to knock Chinese drivers, but riding in the passenger seat of a Santana Taxi makes for a good “E-Ticket” ride. The words “scary” and “thrilling” come to mind, I’m still trying to get my underwear to come clean. The driver who was hired by the company to haul me around would have put to shame even some NASCAR stock car drivers. Mr. Song was very good and got us to work everyday right on time, just don’t look over his shoulder see what was comming down the lane.
Technically it is illegal to use a foreign license plate other than the city you reside. Well, it’s wise. You don’t need to care the speeding detectors and cameras. You also don’t need to care the illegal parking tickets. :-)