After piloting in five cities since late 2016, the application of special license for new energy vehicle are being expanded to another 12 cities including Qingdao in Shandong province, starting from Nov. 20.

As of 4 pm on the day, the local vehicle administrative office of Qingdao released 257 new energy vehicle licenses. 168 car owners picked their license numbers online.

To offer convenience to car owners, the office set up a workshop for making the special license plates on site. The process includes the scanning of QR codes to establish digital documents of the vehicles.

The special license plates have a refreshing green color, distinctively different from traditional blue ones, and contain six digits, carrying more coded information than the five-digit ones.

Each new energy vehicle license plate costs 100 yuan, the same as a traditional one. In the future, 10 service stations in the city will handle the transaction.

Owners of existing new energy vehicles may or may not opt for new license plates, the vehicle administrative office can identify the state of their vehicles via the information database. But in the future all new energy vehicles will be registered with the special licenses.

After trying out in Qingdao, Shandong plans to replicate the practice in the two cities of Linyi and Weifang in late December and the whole province in March.