

Taichung City is a dynamic city. Various indicators of population, commerce, and industry are growing rapidly, and motor vehicles are also increasing. According to statistics of 2023, there were 3.02 million motor vehicles in Taichung City, including approximately 1.84 million scooters, accounting for about 61%. Scooters should undergo regular exhaust inspections.
However, for many scooters is challenging to manage exhaust gases. To inspect scooters, the Environmental Protection Bureau of Taichung City Government cooperated with taxi operators in 2023 to recruit 70 taxis and install automatic license plate recognition system equipment. This is different from the fixed-location license plate recognition system used in the past.
This system uses two sets of photography lenses to automatically capture driving images and transmit them to the system management platform through the network equipment on vehicles for automatic AI license plate image recognition and use GPS real-time positioning to ensure accurate license plate photos and displays coordinates, time, and vehicle driving status. If vehicles are not properly maintained, they will easily emit smoke.
To save manpower and facilitate management, the Environmental Protection Bureau has developed AI technology to identify smoke-emitting vehicles. When a smoke-emitting vehicle is found, it can further notify the owner to improve the vehicle and inspect it. In the past, the judgment of smoke-emitting vehicles was based on the visual judgment of personnel, and there may be slight errors.
To ensure consistency in execution, system judgment was used to ensure that the judgment criteria for smoke-emitting vehicles are the same to reduce inconsistencies in law enforcement due to misjudgment of personnel. In 2023, through cooperation with taxis, a total of 21,338 scooters that had not completed regular inspections were seized, with an average of 305 scooters per taxi.
Environmental Protection Bureau has notified vehicle owners to complete the inspections within the deadline. When the city’s smoke-emitting vehicles complete regular inspections and meet emission standards as scheduled, it helps improve air quality. This innovative work uses taxis to replace Environmental Protection Bureau inspections, which can save 780.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, reduce environmental load, maintain air quality, and be beneficial to human health and the respiratory system.
Category:Government and InstitutionsYear:2024Location: Taichung City, TaiwanLead Designer:Wen-Shen ChungDesigners:Environmental Protection Bureau of Taichung City GovernmentClient:Environmental Protection Bureau of Taichung City GovernmentPhotographers:Chia-Chi Chen