How many people would it take to lift a car?

Question: How many people would it take to lift a car?
- Keywords:
  car
Asked by anon-74766 on 2 Jun 2020.
- Stephen Jeapes answered on 2 Jun 2020:
  
  A Vauxhall Adam (as an example) is approximately 1000kg. People can safely lift around 20kg (although this varies depending upon how high you are lifting). So you’d need around 50 people. If you aren’t too concerned about health and safety then people can lift much more, around 50-80kg – meaning around 12 people could lift a car.
- Rob Hudd answered on 2 Jun 2020:
  
  Cars in the UK vary between about 850kg – 2000kg. Let’s take the average so 1,450kg.
  If you grab the underside of a car and lift that’s similar to a weightlifting ‘deadlift’ position. A quick google search suggests an untrained 75kg man can deadlift around 63kg.
  So you would need 1450kg/63kg = approximately 23 people.
- Rosina Simmons answered on 2 Jun 2020:
  
  There is also a method called “bouncing” which involves fewer people than what Stephen Jeapes has calculated to move a car. They will hold the underside of the car and both rock it side to side and half lift it up. Getting the right timing will ‘wobble’ the car out of the way as well. Firefighters sometimes use this method (but it’s not best practice!) to move parked cars out of the way so they can get their large fire engines down narrow streets.
- Tom Rooney answered on 2 Jun 2020:
  
  One!
  
  A good engineer will find a better way of lifting a car than getting a number of people around it and risking injury.
  
  Hydraulic jack – one person to pump the handle
  Crane – one operator
  Inflatable air bag (used to re-right lorries that have tipped over) – one, maybe two people if it’s a big truck!
  Lever – long lever with a water bag on the other end, gradually fill the water bag and see the car rise (one person)
  Helicopter – ok, two/three people; the pilot and a person in the back to guide the pilot in, and a person on the ground to hook up the harness.
- Juan Carlos Fallas-Chinchilla answered on 2 Jun 2020:
  
  We tried it in high school 🙂
  
  I did a car mechanics apprenticeship before Uni. Took 6 people at the rear side and 10 in the front. The car was 1000Kg approx and we couldn’t hold it “in the air” for very long but we made it! Not very different from what Stephen calculated indeed.
  
  Remember a very strong guy who could lift a car’s engine with his bare hands. I wouldn’t encourage people on taking these challenges today. Health and safety first!
- Isabel Vidal answered on 2 Jun 2020:
  
  I would say one, if you use a hydraulic jack or a crane, but it can even be zero if you get a robot to do it for you! 😉
- anon answered on 14 Jun 2020:
  
  Based on a weight of approx. an average city car around 1000kg. People can lift around 20-25kg safely, but many can lift a lot more than that (NOT RECOMMENDED) so it could take 20 people to lift a vehicle or maybe even 5 or 10 people if each of those people could lift 2 or 4 times their recommended amount.

Question: How many people would it take to lift a car?

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