You know Murphy’s Law “Everything that can go wrong will go wrong” – at a short notice we had to manage quite some difficulties.
Maybe you read about our first obstacle with the insurance on how we got our Sprinter: For the registration of a vehicle, you get 2 evB-numbers form your future car insurance company; the first number is for the temporary 5-day registration and the second number for the final registration of the car. We only got one number but Jan knew about the necessity of two numbers. So we last minute checked with our insurance company and of course the number we had was the second (final) number but for right now we needed the first (temporary) number. Fortunately we got the first number on time for the temporary registration and were able to bring the car home. Thanks to Jan, everything went well.
For the final registration of our Sprinter in Hamburg we made an appointment beforehand at the LBV Landesbetrieb Verkehr (this is the German Department for Motor Vehicles; DMV) but getting an appointment was not as easy as it was when we applied for our new passports, because appointments were only available in two weeks. We were lucky we rented a parking space for our regular car when we moved to our current apartment close to the city center where parking space is rare, and could park the Sprinter there, because non-registered cars are not allowed to be standing on the public street, only on private property.
Preparing for the appointment, I collected all the documents we were supposed to bring to the registration appointment but forgot to print the confirmation! Oops, but in today’s digital age, who needs a printed appointment confirmation?! (Note: We will have to bring the printed appointment confirmation for the application of the US-Visa) I’m glad Jan re-read the confirmation e-mail with the guidelines beforehand. Thanks Janni 😉
With now all required documents we were just on time at the registration office and it was our turn quickly; this is great about making an appointment beforehand because the queue was already quite long at 7:45 in the morning.
So we submitted all documents, the direct debit mandate for the vehicle tax as well as the second eVB-number – but it did not work. How was this possible, the first one worked just fine?! Well, officially the Sprinter is a truck, but in the vehicle category for the insurance the agent entered automobile. The lady at the registration office was really nice and gave us the opportunity to call the insurance agent to generate a new eVB-number for registering a truck. So we called the agent but was afraid he would not answer his phone at 8 am. But he did (a little sleepy) and was able to give me a new eVB-number via phone and e-mail. We still don’t know how the temporary registration in Bavaria worked with the wrong vehicle category, but we’re just happy it did.
Finally we were able to register our Sprinter and our desired license plate was also available!
Now it’s up to us to convert the Sprinter into a mobile home to officially change the vehicle category from truck to mobile home and get the required TÜV-approval! The vehicle tax as well as the insurance premium for a truck are quite expensive. We thought that, until we finally converted the Sprinter, we could register it as a regular automobile, but unfortunately there are some criteria our Sprinter just does not fulfill (bench seat as well as windows at the seats) because it’s a cargo van; that’s what’s written in the registration certificate – “van”. Fortunately our driving licenses (category B) allow us to drive cargo vans up to a total weight of 3,5 tons even though it officially is a truck.