Monday 20 September 2010

How to register your car in Germany





Warsteiner - Multicolor field




Hi everyone,

this is a short guide for those that have planned to come to Germany with their own car and want to register it there. Here illustrated the procedure to get a German plate for your car. However the following "guide" is based on my personal experience and it comes with no warranty. So the first thing to do is to contact your local motor vehicle licensing authority (Kfz.-Zulassungsbehörde) and ask them which documents you need to provide.

Assuming your car is Italian, you will need the following documents: Passport, Italian car document, Italian plates, possession certificate, TÜV & COC certificate, an electronic confermation of insurance (Elektronische Versicherungsbestätigung-EVB) and a plate reservation (optional). Here below a more detailed list...

Passport (or any other official document of identification).

Italian Car document: the paper reporting all the information about your car such as tires size, engine, exhaust, KW, and so on.

Possession certificate: the paper proving that you are the owner of the car.

TÜV and COC: basically they are both conformity certificates. If your car passes the TÜV check you will get a stickers on your (new) plate showing that your car is allowed to circulate in Germany (costs around 100 euro). Your dealer/garage may be able to provide those documents for you. You can ask them also to deal with removing the Italian plate (see next step) and installing the new onces.


Italian plate: you (or your trusted garage/dealer) must take your Italian plates off from the car and bring them to the Kfz.-Zulassungsbehörde together with all the other documents.

Insurance Electronic Number: this is a number (7 digits) that your (new) insurance will give you once you stipulate an insurance contract. I would suggest ADAC, but I´m pretty sure that there are cheaper companies on the web. The advantage of getting an insurance with ADAC is that you will became a member and would benefit of their assistance around Germany. In addition ADAC has "branch" every big city in Germany, so you can stipulate the insurance there instead of doing everything on the web. ADAC will also ask you to prove your old "merit class". You may be asked to provide a German or an English version of it.

Plate number: In Germany, by paying a small fees (15 euro) you can choose part of the letter-number combination you can put on the new plate. To do that usually there is an on-line service which will check if your combination is still free and it will eventually reserve it for you. If your booking will be accepted, print the reservation and put it on the pile with the other documents.

Well, once you have all the documents go to the Kfz.-Zulassungsbehörde in your city. If everything is ok, they will keep (and then destroy) your Italian plate and store your Italian car documents. Then, they will give you a paper that you have to show to the plate-shop to buy your new plate (22 euro) and then back to the motor place where they will put the TÜV sticker.

Once you have your new plates with the TÜV sticker you can put them back on your car.

Now, I know the process may be tedious, but there are at least two reasons to get a German plate. First because you have to. The second reason is that car insurances are usually cheaper than the Italian once. The downside is that you must pay the circulation tax (but that in Italy as well).

Enjoy your new German plate but mind speed cameras!

Best

Michele