It's easier for memory and verbalization.

So for example the capital O on license plates in California is only distinguished from the zero by being slightly more squarish, the capital G is mostly distinguished from six by six being slightly more smooth and diagonal in its top arc. I and one are a bit further visually, as are B and 8, but it would probably fool a traffic camera that was taking down plates automatically.

In addition, all-numbers-plates, I believe, are reserved by California exempt plates (emergency vehicles, police), and vanity plates are absolutely a thing, much more likely to start and/or end on a letter, so that's why you see numbers at the beginning and end. Like you can kinda see “6EIC023” and say “oh yeah my car looks like an ad for Geico” but because the start and end are numbers it doesn't occur to most people.

So... the headline is BS, and California is just being dumb?

This is not a shock. After moving here, I find that CA's highly-touted "car culture" is pretty retrograde compared to other major metro areas.

I tried this but the DMV doesn't let you request it ;-( Alas, probably for the better...

At each DMV there are a stack of license plates that they hand out on-site. So requesting a vanity plate of the same format would probably require them to search those stacks (across all DMVs) to pick out the plate.

first shortest word proposed seems like the winner to me. or sort of boggle scoring, where ascending lengths of words are scored