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Assign and Retain Number Plate

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Once you’ve paid to take the number plate off the car £80, the plate goes back into retention and usually the old plate is the reassigned. The V5 then comes in the post a few days later for the old plate on the car.

I’ve just done this ready for trading in my 2020 M3 for a MIC 2022 on Wednesday. I wonder how long before my current car gets listed with FSD on the site.
 
You need to put the plate on retention. Assuming you are trading in the old car as part of your collection you need to do this in "reasonable" time (but I think there is a fair grace period for the old plate to remain on the car after that) and put the old plates back on (IME taking the personal plate off the car has always reassigned the original Reg - hopefully you kept the plates.

The "reasonable time" is because you need to upload a scan of the physical, replacement, V5 to Tesla as part of your Trade-In Acceptance, and it will take DVLA a few days to get that to you that replacement V5. If you aren't trading in then that point is presumably moot, and can happen at a time to suit you and disposal of the original vehicle.

You can use the Retention Document to re-assign the plate to the new car. If you do that online that is "instant". In the old days you had to wait for the V5 for the new car, and only then apply for the personal plate to be assigned.

I got stick on plates, much more aerodynamic than the rubbish flappy-plate holders that Tesla use.
 
I don't need to trade in the car. I just want to swap my wife's personalised plate for mine. I was hoping I could do this in one go rather than spread out over two weeks. Any ideas?
Sorry but you cannot do this. When you take a personal reg off a car you will be given a reference number for the retention of the number you have just removed, you can use this reference number to immediately assign that retained number onto another vehicle assuming that you have the V5 document for the new target vehicle. But in relation to the car you have just taken the personal reg from (they call it the donor vehicle) you have to wait until you get the new V5 (3-5 days) in the post as you need the reference number printed on the front of the new V5 in order to assign a new personal reg to that vehicle.

I have just been through the whole process of moving my personal reg off my old car and putting my son's personal reg onto that (he bought my old car) so that I could put my personal reg onto my new M3 RWD. So we have received 4 new V5s over the last 3 weeks, each took only 3 days though.
 
The online form let's you do it but I'm wondering if I'll be in a world of pain for the old personalised plate

I think if you like the plate its worth doing, its not that much hassle.

Basically you can put the existing plate onto retention and then do something about it later / at your leisure. (I think you have to pay a fee after 12 months or something like that). But you can also do that as-soon-as too ...

assuming that you have the V5 document for the new target vehicle

Not sure about that, in the sense that when I got the latest Tesla I did the online re-assignment to change the plate (from the retention document I had).

I did not have the V5 for the new, target, vehicle at that point ... although it is possible that DVLA had already "sent" it, so their system might have assumed it was sent. But that might also mean that you can allocate to a car where DVLA has not yet actually sent the corrected V5
 
Not sure about that, in the sense that when I got the latest Tesla I did the online re-assignment to change the plate (from the retention document I had).

I did not have the V5 for the new, target, vehicle at that point ... although it is possible that DVLA had already "sent" it, so their system might have assumed it was sent. But that might also mean that you can allocate to a car where DVLA has not yet actually sent the corrected V5
I don't think you can do this because you need to enter the "Document Reference Number" at the top right of the V5 to do the transfer. If you had a new Tesla but did not yet have the V5 I'm not sure how you could have got this to work!

EDIT: But you also mention a 'corrected V5' which sort of implies you had an earlier V5 for this vehicle?