If you have a car in California and want to take it off the road for a while, to save money on registration and insurance you can file “Planned Non-Operation.” Here’s a brief rundown on how “non-op” works, how to use it, and some potential pitfalls with it.
Planned Non-Operation, also referred to as PNO or just “non-op,” is an option you’ll see every time your annual California vehicle registration renewal notice comes around. “I forgot to put my broken BMW E30 on non-op three years ago and now I’m broke,” your car buddy might have once told you. Don’t be that friend!
AdvertisementIn the case of my personal Nissan Z , I had the option to re-up the registration as usual for $128 or pay $20 for PNO.
AdvertisementThe best use of PNO status is for situations where you want to mothball a car for a long time, but don’t want to rack up a big stack of late fees. If you simply stop paying your registration while your car’s not used, you won’t get pulled over of course, but you will accumulate major fees and you (or a new buyer) won’t be able to register the car again until those fees are paid.
AdvertisementCalifornia determines your registration cost by vehicle value, hence my cheap Z’s annual rate being so low. A newer car would cost a lot more every year, though, and PNO would more worthwhile.
Let’s say you own multiple cars but aren’t driving one much. You don’t really want to sell it, but hate paying recurring costs on it while it’s just sitting. With PNO, you can legally take insurance off your car while taking advantage of that super-low registration fee.
AdvertisementOr, if you’ve got a project car that won’t pass emissions or just has a really long way to go before it’s road-ready, a PNO car doesn’t need to be smogged either. Until it comes time to return to the road, that is.
A PNO car cannot be legally driven or street parked. You probably figured that. In fact, it’s not even supposed to be towed on non-op without a special moving permit .
AdvertisementWhen you do want to drive the car, you need to physically go to the DMV or AAA to put the paperwork through. We’ll cover that shortly.
But remember: PNO status is really only optimal if you’re sure the car’s going to be off the road for at least a full year. If you put it on non-op and then want to return it to road-legal status before your first year’s up, you still have to pay for a full year’s worth of registration. On the plus side, though, as discussed, you don’t have any late fees. So if you cancelled your insurance, you likely did save money doing non-op for only part of a year even though you have to eat the non-op fee and registration fee. At least you won’t have any late fees.
AdvertisementThe DMV will accept PNO filings up to 60 days before registration expires or
up to 90 days after registration expires, so that’s your window.
When registration renewal comes due and you want to take the car off the road, doing PNO instead of a standard registration will be very clearly instructed and laid out right in the document you get in the mail.
You can also file online if you don’t have the paperwork handy.
If you want to take a car off the road outside the DMV’s prescribed PNO period of time, you might want to try getting an Affidavit Of Non-Use.
AdvertisementWell, shoot, what about if you just want to take your car off the road for just a few months? Keeping it registered without insurance, even if you don’t drive it, isn’t legal and could potentially cost you penalties.
AdvertisementBut as you just read, PNO filing can only be done in a certain window of time. If you’re outside that window, don’t want to drive for a while, and want to suspend insurance but be able to reactive the car for road use easily, look into filing an Affidavit Of Non-Use online . With that, you should be able to legally stop insuring your vehicle for the period of time you want to.
However! An Affidavit Of Non-Use has caveats too. You can only use one on a car that’s currently registered, the document needs to be submitted before the period of non-use begins, and if your registration is going to expire within 75 days, you can’t use this form at all.
AdvertisementIf your registration renewal comes due while you’re vehicle’s being “non-used,” the DMV is supposed to force you to pick, either bring the car back on the road or file for PNO.
Ready to drive again, great! Getting a car from PNO status to a regular registration is slightly more arduous than taking it off, but it’s not too bad as long as you have your paperwork in order.
AdvertisementAs of this writing, there’s no provision for moving a car from Planned Non-Op status to a regular registration online. So you have to physically go to the DMV or AAA if you’re a member to get it done, and that’s basically why it’s a pain. And don’t forget that AAA in southern California only takes cash or checks for dealing with DMV-related business! If you’re in NorCal, that’s not the case. Weirdly.
Which one you go to, DMV vs. AAA, basically just determines how long you should plan to wait. DMV lines are typically much worse than AAA’s, though where I’m at in west LA they’re both pretty brutal.
AdvertisementAnyway, here’s what you’ll need to have in order to get this done:
The latest version of the California DMV website is decent, but I was annoyed that there didn’t seem to be a single page covering both starting and stopping a vehicle’s non-op status, hence wanting to write this post
AdvertisementI’m also hoping that the comment section gets populated for more tips from people who have dealt with specific situations that might not be detailed on the standard DMV pages.
Meanwhile, here are some useful links that should help you if you’re still confused on this process. (A few of which are linked above as well.):
