Red Plate Forecast · Germany

Generated June 29, 2026 · 17:23 · Signal: PLATE_PHOTO uploaded (and later approved) — matches bahn-onboarding-dashboard
Forecast · next week · Jul 06 – Jul 12
511 Central estimate8
red plates expected next week
Based on trailing 4-week average (11.0) + linear trend (slope -1.0/wk) + this week's pace (1 so far through day 1 of 7).
1
This week so far
Jun 29 – today · day 1 of 7
7
Last completed week
Jun 22 – Jun 28
11.0
Trailing 4-wk avg
min 7 · max 16
80
Total since launch
Apr 20 onward

Weekly History

Red plates approved (solid bars) vs red-plate emails sent that week (light bars · leading indicator).
9
35
May 11
9
58
May 18
7
40
May 25
10
33
Jun 01
16
40
Jun 08
11
81
Jun 15
7
23
Jun 22
1
2
Jun 29 · now
Red plates approved · PLATE_PHOTO with status=APPROVED
Red-plate emails sent · application to Zulassungsstelle
Current week (partial)

Pipeline Pressure · Leading Indicators

Where drivers are stuck right now, in order of "closeness to red plates". Top of list feeds the weeks ahead; bottom feeds next week.
Selected insurance · no eVB
353
Picked an insurance option in-app but hasn't gotten/uploaded an eVB number from an insurer. Biggest funnel leak — only ~35% of these progress.
eVB uploaded · no email yet
80
Driver has the eVB number on file. Ops can send the red-plate email to the Zulassungsstelle. Usually fast.
Email sent · awaiting plates
271
Red-plate email sent to Zulassungsstelle. These are the ones we expect to see plate-photo uploads from next.

The Funnel

Where 10,748 signups have ended up. Biggest leak: 52% of drivers who pick an insurance option actually get an eVB number from an insurer.
10,748
Signups
7 in last 7d
→ 9.3%
998
Führungszeugnis + GZR
both uploaded
→ 82.3%
821
Gewerbeanmeldung
Gewerbeschein uploaded
→ 101.1%
830
Insurance selected
radio click in-app
→ 51.7%
429
eVB uploaded
got number from insurer
→ 78.6%*
337*
Red-plate email sent
271 awaiting plates · see note
→ 23.7%
80
Red plates received
0.74% of signups
*Red-plate email caveat: the redPlatesEmailSentAt field has only been populated since Apr 29, 2026 (21 days). Of the 80 drivers who already received plates, only 4 have this field set — the other 18 went through an older manual process that didn't populate it. So 337 is the count of trackably-emailed drivers, not all drivers ever emailed. The forecast itself uses plate-photo uploads as the signal so it isn't affected by this gap.

eVB approval: a separate back-office verification — not a gate. Of the 337 emails sent, only 118 had APPROVED eVB at email time; the other 219 were sent on UPLOADED status (ops trusts the upload and approves later).

The Funnel · By Signup Cohort

Each row = drivers who signed up that week. Cells show how many have reached each stage and what % of the cohort that is. Older cohorts have had more time to convert — recent weeks are still maturing.
Signup week Signups FZ + GZR Gewerbe Insurance eVB Email Plates
Jun 29this wk ·100.0%00.0%00.0%00.0%00.0%00.0%
Jun 221w ago ·6233.3%233.3%233.3%00.0%116.7%00.0%
Jun 152w ago ·264269.8%259.5%249.1%83.0%72.7%00.0%
Jun 083w ago ·68913.2%1014.7%1116.2%45.9%45.9%00.0%
Jun 014w ago ·443286.3%296.5%327.2%132.9%132.9%00.0%
May 255w ago ·1,131857.5%655.7%716.3%363.2%312.7%10.1%
May 186w ago1,2381149.2%1048.4%1189.5%494.0%443.6%50.4%
May 117w ago1,8551136.1%965.2%1126.0%532.9%502.7%50.3%
May 048w ago1,8731487.9%1317.0%1467.8%603.2%542.9%110.6%
Apr 279w ago1,10111110.1%898.1%948.5%534.8%403.6%90.8%
Apr 2010w ago8669010.4%839.6%8910.3%495.7%374.3%151.7%
Apr 1311w ago90810811.9%758.3%566.2%465.1%222.4%202.2%
Apr 0612w ago68110415.3%8412.3%588.5%436.3%304.4%111.6%
How to read: darker red = higher conversion to that stage. Each column is colored on its own scale (so eVB conversion in May is comparable to eVB conversion in April — not to FZ+GZR conversion). A "·" next to the cohort age means it hasn't had enough time to fully mature (typically takes ~6 weeks for plates to come through).

Insurance Pool · By Age

433 drivers finished insurance but haven't sent the red-plate email yet. Older entries convert less often.
Days since insurance done Drivers % of pool
0–6 days · fresh297%
7–13 days338%
14–20 days368%
21+ days · stale32375%

How the forecast works

Plain-English explanation of the math behind the 5–11 headline.

The basic idea. We look at the past in three different ways and blend them. No single view is right on its own — a flat average misses the trend, a pure trend overreacts, and today's pace is noisy. Mixing them produces something steadier than any one of them alone.

  1. "How many do we usually get?" Average of the last 4 completed weeks — the baseline. Stable, but slow to react to change. 10 + 16 + 11 + 7  ÷  4  =  11.0
  2. "Which direction are we going?" Draw a line through the same 4 weeks, then extend it one week forward. Captures whether we're growing or shrinking. 7 + slope (-1.0/wk)  =  6.0
  3. "How are we pacing right now?" This week's count so far, scaled to a full 7-day week. Freshest signal, but 1 day into the week is noisy. 1 × 7 ÷ 1  =  7.0
The blend — weighted 40 / 40 / 20:
0.4 × 11.0  +  0.4 × 6.0  +  0.2 × 7.0  =  8.2  →  central 8

Why 40/40/20? Trust trailing average and trend equally; lean less on this week because one Wednesday isn't a full week of evidence.

The range (5 – 11): roughly ±35% around the central estimate, but never below half of last week's actual (7). This says "if recent weeks keep behaving like they have been, expect around 8 — with normal week-to-week variance, anywhere from 5 to 11".

Why this is useful

  • Sets a defensible expectation for HQ. "We expect 5–11 next week" beats guessing.
  • Acts as an early-warning baseline. If Friday's count is far below 5, something has broken (Zulassungsstelle delay, ops backlog, etc.) before you'd otherwise notice.
  • Shows which lever is moving. Trailing avg flat but trend up? Growth is recent. Pace ahead of trend? Big week incoming. Each input tells you something different.

What it doesn't do

  • Doesn't use the funnel directly. 35 emails went to the Zulassungsstelle last week — those will land in the forecast only once plates start arriving (visible in this-week pace or next week's trend).
  • Doesn't know about external events. A Zulassungsstelle holiday, a system outage, or a sudden capacity change in ops won't be reflected until it shows up in the data.
  • Forecast horizon is 1 week. Extending further out compounds noise — this gets unreliable beyond a week.

Signal definition

A driver "got red plates" on the day they uploaded their PLATE_PHOTO document (only counted once ops eventually marks it APPROVED). This is the same definition used by the existing bahn-onboarding-dashboard. The upload date represents when the driver physically received the plates; the approval date is a back-office event that lags 0–3 days, so we use upload date as the truer "plates received" timestamp.

Assumptions

Everything baked into the 5–11 number. If one breaks, the forecast misses.

Signal — how we count plates

Math — how we extrapolate

Domain — what could break it