# Registration review: Taiwan > A review of the vehicle registration plates of Taiwan. The first of an ongoing series. Vehicle registration plates provide a ubiquitous numbering scheme that's easy to enjoy: just walk around the streets and pay attention. Each country offers its own variant of the form, so in this series I will review each country's registration plates as I encounter them. > These reviews are not scientific and should not be quoted as authoritative. ## Introduction Taiwan's scheme was refreshed in 2012. This review only considers the post-refresh scheme. Older plates are still very common. ## Schema A simple, consistent scheme: `AAA-0000`. The usual suspects are omitted from the letter prefix – `O`, `I` – but `Q` remains, as we'll see below. Absurdly, the number `4` is no longer used. I thought this was user preference, as I did see _one_ in the wild. But it seems that the user preference was so strong, they elected to remove it. The plate I saw must have been from an older range. This broad omission of `4` is common across Asia – it sounds like the word 'death' – as is the equally absurd omission of the West's superstition, `13`.[^thirteen] (Combined with the fact that the ground floor is represented as `1` means that a room on the 14th floor isn't quite as high as one might hope.) [^thirteen]: `13` is _not_ excluded from the registration scheme, to be clear. I refer to its common omission from building floor numbers. The scheme allows a theoretical maximum of `24^3 × 9^4 = 90,699,264` plates. Given Taiwan's population of 23.5m people this is a touch under 4 cars each. This doesn't feel like enough, but the most recent plate I saw began `CCD` indicating that about 10% of plates have been issued in 14 years. So we don't need to worry about them running out. ### Special cases There are special cases for electric vehicles `E__-____`, rentals `R__-____`, and so on. I appreciate this additional information being encoded in the plate. They've also removed a whole bunch of three-letter words from the pool so bad luck if you wanted `GAY-0000`. Inexplicably, `ANT` is disallowed. Because that's … an ant? ### Issue date The scheme encodes issue date gracefully: it's pretty obvious by looking at cars that they started at `AAA` and they're currently somewhere in the early-to-mid-`C__`s. This avoids issues of specifically encoding a year into the plate, as we'll see the next time I visit the UK. It also provides a free street game: find the latest plate! ### Region awareness There appears to be no region encoding in the plate. Taiwan is a relatively small island so this probably isn't necessary, but I do like knowing where someone is from. ### Schema: 4/5 - Pro: simple, obvious, and consistent. - Con: no regional coding, the `4` thing, and it feels punitive to have excluded `ANT`. ## Design A simple plate, stamped metal, black on white in its standard form. I prefer an embossing over a cheaper-looking laminate so top marks here. The typeface is slightly condensed which looks nice on the plate. But I like a plate to fill the space given for it on the vehicle, and a narrow plate rarely does that. Theoretically that's a `-` dash separating the letters and numbers, but it's shown as a dot on most (all?) plates. I would have stretched that out a little, at least on cars where there's plenty of room. ### Points for a nice `Q` If you're going to use a `Q` you really have to make sure it looks like a `Q`. Taiwan is a clear pass in this category. ### Markings at the bottom Apparently they moved the screw holes exclusively to the top to allow for those markings, barely visible, at the bottom. I wouldn't have bothered. ### Design: 3/5 - Pro: stamped metal. A nice typeface. - Con: no other adornments. Kinda plain. Doesn't fill the space. ## Summary Overall Taiwan scores 7/10: not bad for our first entrant. It's an inoffensive plate that does the job without trying to get in your face. I just wish that they'd put a _touch_ more into its design.