Mastodawn

Dan Luu Mar 15, 2024

I was surprised to see that my car's payload rating is 650lbs considering that it has 5 seats (130 lbs per person!), but then I remembered that these Google knowledge card results are usually wrong.

Even so, it turns out the correct answer is barely over 1000 lbs, or ~200 lbs per person, which still seems surprisingly low. For reference, in the U.S., this is roughly the median weight of a 40 y/o male and also the average weight of an adult (20+ y/o) male.

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Dan Luu Mar 15, 2024

From looking up other cars, it's fairly common to have 5 seaters with a payload capacity around 800 lbs (I looked up two random cars and one was 850 lbs, another 820 lbs).

If you add in some luggage, it wouldn't be hard to get to something like 130-140 lbs per person.

I guess people just ignore the payload ratings on cars, but there's something a bit odd about the spatial capacity of cars vs. their designed payload capacities.

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george

@danluu I wouldn't be surprised if that payload rating is the weight at which it is still able to hit safety performance benchmarks like braking distance, or collision avoidance maneuvers. Could also be the limit past which ride quality changes. The vehicles would be, I assume, designed for the most common use case, 1-2 passengers + light luggage.