How many elevators are there in the world?
How many elevators are there in the world?
about 21 million
Lifts carry more passengers each day than every airline, railway and metro system in the world combined, and the industry's revenue comes overwhelmingly from maintaining the installed base rather than selling new units.
Industry figures put the global installed base at roughly 21 million lifts, of which over half are in China — a country that installed more elevators in the last fifteen years than the rest of the world has in total. Roughly a million new units are sold each year and China takes about two-thirds of them. Lifts are among the most heavily regulated machines in ordinary life and are inspected annually in most jurisdictions, which is precisely why a global count exists at all.
How the figure is arrived at
Lifts must be registered and periodically inspected, so national safety authorities hold real counts. The manufacturers — a small oligopoly who between them service most of the world's units — aggregate these with their own service portfolios. The uncertainty is mostly in older buildings in countries with weak registration.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 18,000,000
- High estimate
- 24,000,000
- Spread
- 1.3× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many airports are there in the world? about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many cities are there in the world? about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
Common questions
- How many elevators are there in the world?
- about 21 million
- How is that estimated?
- Lifts must be registered and periodically inspected, so national safety authorities hold real counts. The manufacturers — a small oligopoly who between them service most of the world's units — aggregate these with their own service portfolios. The uncertainty is mostly in older buildings in countries with weak registration.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place