Motorcycle My bike is over 150cc. Do I need a different licence?
Short answer
Up to and including 250cc it is the ordinary scooter licence, the same one a 125 uses. Over 250cc is a different licence, 大型重型機車, and it is the one route in Taiwan where a driving school is compulsory by law, on top of being 20 and holding the ordinary licence for a year. The 150cc line is real, but it is where road tax starts, not where the licence changes.
Two numbers get repeated in this conversation, 150 and 250, and almost everyone has them attached to the wrong thing. Both are real lines in Taiwanese law. They are just lines in two completely different laws.
250cc is the licence line. 150cc is the tax line. Getting them the right way round answers most of the question.
The four classes, as the law writes them
Article 3 of the Road Traffic Safety Rules splits motorcycles into four, and the boundaries are exact.
- 小型輕型機車, small light. Electric only, motor under 1.34 HP and a top speed of 45 km/h or less.
- 普通輕型機車, ordinary light. 50cc or under, or the electric equivalent up to 5 HP.
- 普通重型機車, ordinary heavy. Over 50cc and up to and including 250cc, or an electric motor over 5 HP and up to 40 HP.
- 大型重型機車, large heavy. Over 250cc, or an electric motor over 40 HP.
Read the third one again, because it is the whole answer. A 125, a 150, a 155 and a 250 are all 普通重型機車. They take the same licence, they sit the same exam, and it is the licence this site’s scooter guide walks you through. A 250cc Ninja is an ordinary scooter licence in Taiwan. A 300 is not.
Where 150cc really does bite
The 150 in your head is not imaginary. It is the first band in the vehicle licence tax table, and crossing it costs you money every year for as long as you own the bike.
Two annual charges apply to a motorcycle. 使用牌照稅, the vehicle licence tax, and 公路使用養護安全管理費, the road maintenance and safety fee that used to be called the fuel fee, collected each July. Put the two tables side by side and the shape of the thing appears.
| Engine | Licence tax | Road fee | Total per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 125cc | NT$0 | NT$450 | NT$450 |
| 150cc | NT$0 | NT$600 | NT$600 |
| 155cc | NT$800 | NT$600 | NT$1,400 |
| 250cc | NT$800 | NT$600 | NT$1,400 |
| 400cc | NT$1,620 | NT$900 | NT$2,520 |
| 650cc | NT$4,320 | NT$1,800 | NT$6,120 |
The tax table is written as 150 and under, NT$0 and 151 to 250, NT$800, so a 155cc scooter costs its owner NT$800 a year more than a 150cc one, on the same licence, for five extra cubic centimetres. That is worth knowing before you buy, and it is the reason so many models sold here stop at exactly 150.
Over 250cc, the licence you cannot self-study
Everywhere else on this site the answer to “do I need a driving school” is no. This is the exception, and for a first licence it is the only one. The other case is re-sitting after a revocation with a ban of three years or more, which since 30 June 2026 also goes through a school.
Article 60 sets three conditions for the big bike licence, and the third has no way around it.
- You must be 20, not 18.
- You must have held the ordinary 普通重型 licence for at least a year. Not a year of riding, a year of holding the licence, which is a thing the system can check.
- You must graduate from a registered driving training institution. The law says 「並經立案之駕駛訓練機構駕駛訓練結業」, and there is no self-study route past it.
There is a fourth, smaller one. The ordinary scooter licence is explicitly exempt from the fitness test, the eyesight-field and night-vision part of the medical. The big bike is not, so you sit the full version a car applicant sits.
What the course is, and what it costs
The syllabus is fixed by regulation, and it splits at 550cc.
- Under 550cc, 32 hours. Four in a classroom, 28 on the range.
- 550cc and over, 43 hours. Fifteen in a classroom, 28 on the range.
The extra eleven classroom hours are accident prevention, riding theory, first aid and a much longer session on traffic law, which tells you plainly what the government thinks the risk is.
The Highway Bureau’s own training institute publishes its schedule and its prices, which makes a useful benchmark for what a private school should be quoting. It charges NT$7,500 for the course, NT$125 for the exam registration and NT$200 for the card, and runs the 43 hours over about two weeks, classroom on weekdays and range work at weekends. Booking opens online roughly a month before each intake, through 監理服務網 rather than by phoning the school.
Since 1 March 2022 you may also train and test on an automatic big bike. The licence is then endorsed 「限駕自動排檔車輛」, restricted to automatics, and one test item, the straight-line braking exercise, stops penalising you for not reaching third gear.
The test is at the school, not at the Motor Vehicles Office
This surprises people who have already sat the ordinary exam at a 監理站. Big bike candidates test on the school’s own ground with the school’s own bikes, under an approval the law grants to schools that meet the standard. Look at any station’s exam timetable and you will find sessions for ordinary scooters, cars, trucks and articulated vehicles, and none for big bikes.
There are ten scored items, and if you have sat the ordinary riding test you will recognise about half of them.
取車與架車 getting the bike off and onto its stand, 直線平衡駕駛 the slow straight line, which again is the only item you get one re-attempt at, 坡道行駛 the hill, 鐵路平交道 the railway crossing, 斑馬線 the pedestrian crossing, 交叉路口 the junction, 定圓行駛 riding a fixed circle, 直線煞車 straight-line braking, 環場道路行駛 a full lap of the circuit, and 其它操作技術 general technique.
The three that are new relative to the ordinary test are the hill, the fixed circle and straight-line braking, and they are new for an obvious reason. They are the things a 300kg machine does differently from a scooter.
On the written half, the official material lists those ten practical items and no written subject, and the upgrade is charged at the single-item rate of NT$125 rather than the NT$250 that pays for a written paper plus a riding test. The theory is not skipped, it is simply delivered as the compulsory classroom hours instead of examined at a counter. Schools approved to run their own exams are allowed to order things differently, so confirm the day’s programme with yours rather than with a forum.
What actually changes once you have it
This is the part worth understanding before you spend the money, because the licence changes what the vehicle is on the road, not just what you may sit on.
A big bike is treated as a small car. Article 99-1 says 「大型重型機車…比照小型汽車適用其行駛規定」, unless a sign, marking or signal says otherwise. No two-stage left turn, no waiting box, no keeping to the outside lanes because you are a motorcycle. You ride where a car rides and you turn the way a car turns.
Expressways open at 250cc, motorways only at 550cc. Every 大型重型機車 may use a 快速公路 unless that road specifically bans it. Only a bike of 550cc or more may use a 高速公路, and then only on the sections and during the hours the authority has published.
The conditions attached are stricter than ordinary road rules and they are worth reading before your first trip.
- No riding two abreast in a lane and no overtaking within a lane, which is the thing scooters do all day in the city.
- A full-face or open-face helmet. A half shell is not permitted on these roads.
- Headlight on at all times, day included.
- Tyre tread of at least 1mm at every point, checked before you set off.
- On a motorway specifically, no passenger.
At 550cc the bike also gets a front number plate. Article 11 requires two plates, front and rear, for a big bike of 550cc or more, where every other motorcycle carries one at the back. This is the legal spine under the nicknames, 黃牌 for the 250 to 550 class and 紅牌 above it. There is still only one licence, and it covers both.
And it gets inspected like a car. A big bike is exempt from periodic inspection for its first five years, then once a year to ten years, then twice a year, while an ordinary scooter is never called in for a periodic inspection at all.
Two things that are not true
A car licence has never covered a big bike, and since 30 June 2023 a newly issued car licence does not cover any motorcycle at all. Car licences issued before that date still allow a 普通輕型, 50cc or under, and nothing more.
And there is no such thing as a 150cc licence. If a shop tells you that your new 155 needs one, what they mean, if they mean anything, is the tax.
If you are still working towards the ordinary licence, that is the exam this app is built for, and the step-by-step guide covers the whole route. The big bike is a year away by definition, so it is a decision for later rather than a reason to change what you are studying now.