Taiwan will exchange my car licence but not my motorcycle one. Why?

It reads like an oversight, so people assume they have misunderstood the table and go to the counter anyway. They have not misunderstood it. It is the rule, and it is close to universal.

The numbers nobody publishes

Taiwan’s official reciprocity table covers 200 countries, states and territories. Of those, 82 will exchange a car licence with no exam at all. Eight will do the same for a motorcycle.

Eight. The complete list is Finland, Ireland, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Israel, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. If your licence is not from one of those, Taiwan will not swap your motorcycle entitlement, full stop.

Which produces the situation this page is about. 74 jurisdictions exchange your car licence and give you nothing for your motorcycle. That is the single most common outcome on the whole table, more common than a flat refusal of both.

The United States shows it at its sharpest, because Taiwan negotiates with each state separately. Of the 55 US jurisdictions listed, 29 exchange a car licence. Two exchange a motorcycle licence, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Someone moving from Georgia or California or Texas hands over a licence that covers both at home and walks out entitled to drive only the car.

You can check your own jurisdiction here. The answer is given per vehicle for exactly this reason.

Why it happens

Reciprocity is not one agreement, it is a bundle of them, negotiated class by class. Taiwan exchanges a licence class only where the other side exchanges the equivalent Taiwanese class in return, and most licensing authorities never put the motorcycle on the table. Some do not issue a standalone scooter licence at all, some treat it as an endorsement rather than a class, and some simply never recognised Taiwan’s 普通重型機車 as equivalent to anything they issue.

Look at the eight that did and the pattern is obvious. Every one of them names the motorcycle classes explicitly in the agreement, right down to the engine sizes. Ireland covers heavy motorcycles up to 550cc. Finland maps A1 and A2 onto the normal heavy scooter licence. Massachusetts pairs Class M with it by name. These are not accidents of a general agreement, they are deliberate additions, and hardly anyone bothered to make them.

The part that stings

In most of the world the car is the licence that matters and the motorcycle is optional. In Taiwan it is the other way round. The scooter is how you get to work, how you take a child to school, how you leave the city on a Sunday. So reciprocity hands you the licence you will use least and makes you earn the one you will use every day.

There is no appeal and no workaround. What there is, is an exam that is entirely learnable, because unlike the practical side it is drawn from a published bank and nothing else.

What the motorcycle exam actually involves

Three things, in this order, and the order is not optional.

First, the hazard perception test (危險感知測驗). This one surprises people, because it is a hard prerequisite for booking anything else. The booking system refuses you until the result is on your record. Since February 2025 it is 10 video clips and you need 8 right. Fail it and you can still register a result by watching three full rounds, 30 items, so it is not a wall. The result sits on 監理服務網 and is valid for a year. The official set is 126 clips, all of them public.

Then the written exam. Since 30 January 2026 it is 50 multiple-choice questions, 2 points each, and you need 85 to pass. The true or false section is gone. Every question comes from the free official bank, 804 motorcycle questions plus 152 sign questions, and the government publishes it in eight languages. Be careful what you read elsewhere, most English guides still describe the pre-2026 paper with its true or false and picture sections. That exam no longer exists.

Then the riding circuit. Eight scored items, plus two more marked the whole way round, and 70 out of 100 to pass. Most deductions on the official sheet are 32, so a single one of them is already a fail. The straight line is the item that catches people, 15 metres that must take seven seconds or more, and it is the only item you may re-attempt. The circuit opens 30 to 45 minutes before the test for practice laps and the station rents bikes. Every item is drawn out in how the riding test works.

Budget NT$250 for the exam and NT$200 in cash for the card itself when it is printed. Book at 監理服務網 from one month before the date until midnight two days before, and when you fill the form pick 普通重型機車, not 輕型. Choosing 輕型 by mistake is silent and gets you a licence capped at 50cc.

The whole sequence is written out step by step in the motorcycle guide.

The one piece of good news

The written half costs nothing but time. The bank is public, it is the entire exam, and it exists in your language. No book to buy, no driving school to pay for, and no part of it is a secret. People who fail it fail because nobody told them the format changed, not because it is hard.