In March of 2022, Nixon Ryan was having what he termed an insane debate with his mates and decided to seek public opinion via his Twitter handle. He tweeted a question that read: do you think there are more doors or wheels in the world? This soon sparked reactions online. Some said there are more doors simply because there are several rooms in the homes with doors.
However, another group opined that wheels are more, stating that many vehicles are on the road. Ryan, however, immediately conducted a poll that recorded a total of 223,347 votes. While 53.5% voted for wheels, 46.4% opined that there are more doors. Should we conclude based on the result from 223,347 people, or more analysis is needed? Let’s dig deep trying to find precise answers to the, are there more wheels or doors in the world?
How many wheels are in the world?
While Ryan’s poll had given a clue about the ratio of doors to wheels, we may need to make further analysis to verify that claim. Therefore, to answer the question, how many doors or wheels are in the world, let’s first have an idea of the possible number of wheels in the world.
First, know this. Most automobiles moving people and goods come with wheels. This includes vehicles, bicycles, motorbikes, and even toys. There are also other types of automobiles, maybe not common in the US but are found in India and other African countries. An excellent example is a tricycle- a three-wheeled vehicle.
Excluding these, we also have machines with wheels, like wheelbarrows and manual wheelchairs. There are also machines like hand trucks such as shopping carts, carts used to move goods, especially in the streets of Africa, clear plows used by snow pushers, etc.
You will be shocked that there are billions of objects classified as wheels that you may have no idea of, e.g., transmission, steering wheels, gears, door knobs, door hinges, etc. With these numbers of vehicles and machines around the world, you may already have an idea of wheel numbers. But while we can’t provide an exact number, we can narrow it down. So how many wheels are there?
Vehicles
Over 77.9 million vehicles were produced in 2020. If each comes with five wheels, including spares, we will have a total of 389.5 million wheels for vehicles alone. This is just a yearly production. Let’s talk about the total number of cars on earth.
Currently, there are over 1.45 billion cars on earth. Aside from spare parts, every car comes with four wheels, multiplying 1.45 billion cars by four wheels; that’s over 4 billion wheels for cars alone.
Minghong alone makes around 200,000 tricycles annually. If a tricycle comes with three wheels, that leaves us with 600,000 wheels alone for Minghong. Imagine the number when combined with other tricycle manufacturers.
Let’s not even talk about those heavy-duty vehicles used in transporting fuel and other goods. There are millions of them all over. Each of these big vehicles has at least six wheels, with some having up to 14 Wheels.
What about airplanes? They have wheels too. The number of airplanes may not be as much as the number of four-wheeled cars, but they are there in numbers. Each airplane has between 10-22 wheels.
Motorbikes and bicycles
Around 132,860,000 bicycles and 66,430,000 bikes are produced yearly. If each comes with two wheels, we have a total of 265,720,000 bicycles and 132,860,000 bike wheels yearly. Imagine the number of wheels since the year bikes and bicycles were invented.
Toys
Hot Wheels produce over 2 billion toy cars yearly, so there should be approximately 8 billion wheels from Hot wheel toys alone annually. Lego since 2006 has consistently made over 306,000,000 tires for its toy car, with the figure increasing to 381,000,0000 in 2010. These are just two popular toy brands. What about other toy companies?
Other wheels
When you hear wheels, your mind quickly flashes to a vehicle. Well, there are tons of many other wheels. Unicycles, skates, and even rollerblades have wheels. Oh! Wheelies shoes, too, have wheels.
Let’s not even talk about the number of hand trucks worldwide. Other items in their numbers that come with wheels include wheelchairs, wheelbarrows, shopping carts, lawnmowers, door knobs, door hinges, furniture wheels, vehicle jacks, etc.
Using these statistics, how many wheels are in the world? From the analysis above, there should be more than 38 billion wheels, far more than the total human population. But this is only an estimate since the number of wheels worldwide is too many to count.
How many doors are in the world?
Like wheels, it’s difficult to tell the exact number of doors worldwide. However, there are about 2.3 billion houses worldwide. These houses have at least three doors, with some up to ten or more. Let’s assume that each house has an average of 5 doors; that should be about 11.5 billion doors.
There are also big business buildings and offices with lots of doors. Let’s not forget there are also doors in garages, stores, ships, planes, vehicles, etc. With the number of items and structures with doors, how many doors are in the world 2022?
Looking at the number of infrastructures and items with doors, we can estimate that there are over 15 billion doors worldwide. But as stated earlier, it isn’t easy to give a direct answer since there are so many places with doors.
Read: Most Popular Types of Garage Doors
Are There More Wheels or Doors in the world?
Having gotten an idea of how many wheels and doors we have, it’s safe to ask, is there more wheels or doors in the world? From Ryan’s poll results, collective ideas from other social media platforms, and our analysis, there are more wheels than doors worldwide. While we may not be able to give a definite number, there are obviously more than 38 billion wheels—far higher than the number of doors.
There are basically many vehicles, tricycles, bikes, toys, and bicycles. Let’s also include simple machines like wheelbarrows, manual wheelchairs, vehicle jacks, lawnmowers, shopping carts, and other hand trucks. The higher these numbers, the more wheels. While doors are found in automobiles, homes, business places, garages, and other infrastructures, they are not as much as wheels.
However, some people still question this result. According to them, if there are so many buildings and other elements with doors, why is wheel even topping? Moreover, even vehicles that are the major win for wheels still have doors. So for every number of wheels in a vehicle, there are also equal numbers of doors.
While it is true vehicles have wheels and doors, most times, the number of wheels to doors is not always in the same ratio. Sometimes it could be 4:4, and other times 4:2 since there are two-door cars. So even if doors are present in cars, the number of wheels in cars outnumbers the number of doors in cars.
There are even cases where you may have up to 16 wheels and just two doors, just like tankers used to transport fuel. Also, remember there are steering wheels in cars and gears that help power your vehicle. So for people trying to quantify the number of wheels to doors on cars, it’s evident that wheels outnumber doors when it comes to vehicles.
And one more shocking thing, most doors come with hinges, and those hinges are wheels. So for every door, there are at least 2-3 wheels; this alone top wheels over doors. Even your door knobs are wheels since they rotate over an axle to open your door.
So for those asking, are wheels in doors? Yes, those door hinges and knobs are wheels. This brings us to the fact that while wheels outnumber doors in vehicles, wheels also outnumber doors in doors. For every door you count, you may have at least four wheels. Totally giving doors away.
There are also hinges in some windows. Therefore, if most doors and windows come with hinges, the number of wheels increases. But how many windows are in the world? There are over 20 billion windows worldwide. Imagine 10 million windows have at least two hinges; that’s about 20 million more wheels.
Let’s also talk about replacement tires and doors. But first, how often do drivers change wheels compared to when they change doors? This means that, aside from the counted wheels in cars, there are also millions of wheels in factories drivers will need to replace damaged tires.
This brings us to the question, how many tires are in the world? As of 2022, there are about 2.1 trillion units, projected to rise to 2.5 trillion by 2026. With all this analysis, it is safe to say Ryan’s poll was correct; there are more wheels than doors.
Read: Different Types of Car Doors
Frequently Asked Questions—FAQs
Q: When did doors get invented?
Doors were invented about 5000 years ago. Yes, archaeologists had laid their eyes on a 5000-year-old door in Switzerland. However, the first ever documented doors are those found in the hieroglyphs of Egypt. These doors appeared as single or double doors, each built with wood pieces.
Other doors, like those in King Solomon’s temple, according to the Bible, were built with olive wood, trimmed, and coated with gold. Other raw materials used in making early doors were cedar, oak, Elm, and cypress. There are other doors, such as polymer doors, fiberglass doors, fiber-reinforced polymer doors, etc.
Q: Who invented wheels?
History has it that the ancient Mesopotamia people (now Iraq) were the original inventor of wheels dated back to 4200-4000 BC. While some opined the Mesopotamia people might not be the original inventor of wheels, there is archeological proof of wheels in Mesopotamia which was believed to be about 5500 years old.
It began with the Sumerian people putting revolving axles into hard wooden discs. However, these early wheels were not used for transportation but as a potter’s wheel.
Early transportation was later made possible through the combination of wheel and axle, where wheels started to be used in carts and chariots. Transportation mode has, however, been improved via technologies.
Aside from transportation, wheels were also used to spin, navigate and generate hydroelectric energy, directly contributing to agriculture mechanization such as crop irrigation and animal traction. Wheels basically spin the windmill machines used in the craft industries. And these circular rotating frames were later seen across the Middle East and Europe. There was also proof of wheeled carts in China and Europe. However, the wheelbarrow—one carted wheel, was built by the ancient Greeks.
Q: Do Hotwheels doors count as doors?
To start with, let’s first understand what is considered a door. A door is a barricade that swings open and close and is used as an entrance or exit point. So do Hotwheels door count as doors? Team door believed so. Seeing the results of wheels being more than doors, Team door is doing everything possible to prove that there are more doors.
Now it’s recorded that over 16.5 toy cars are built by Hotwheels each second, with a total of six billion sold since inception in 1968. The most annoying part for team door is the fact that all the wheels in these toys are counted as wheels. Therefore, if the wheels on these toys are counted as wheels, the team door opined that the toy doors should also be counted as doors.
However, this does not subscribe to our definition of a door which is supposed to be an entry and exit point. Because these toy doors do not open, it invalidates them being counted as doors. So no, hot wheels doors do not count as doors.
Q: Is a gear a wheel?
When we talk about wheels, we do not talk about only those transporting people and goods alone. Wheels are anything that can move you from one point to another, spin to make a machine work, rotate, navigate, etc. So are gears wheels? Yes! A gear is a rotating machine with teeth with a space in between the teeth joined together.
They are basically used to convey the rotary movement from one part of an appliance to another. So yes, because they rotate, they are also termed wheels.
Typically, gears work in pairs, so when one gear turns, the other also turns.
Gears of different sizes typically come in handy in increasing the power of a swiveling force because of the unique way they work. Smaller gears will spin faster but put out less force. Larger gears, on the other hand, will turn slowly but with greater power force.
Q: How many wheels or doors are in the world?
There are so many wheels, and doors in the world that giving an exact number is difficult. You have wheels in almost all objects like cars, carts, bicycles, tricycles, doors, hand trucks, etc. Doors, on the other hand, are found virtually everywhere that allow exit and entry, like homes, business places, offices, and even cars.
How many doors or wheels in the world? A definite answer can not be given due to the unlimited number of doors and wheels. However, given the number of people, automobiles, machines, and buildings, there are over 38 billion wheels and 15 billion doors worldwide.
Q: Are there more cars or houses in the world?
The number of people worldwide should tell whether there are more houses or cars. So how many people are in the world? There are approximately 7.9 billion worldwide. If most of these people have homes and some establish businesses, there will be more infrastructure which means more doors. But from another angle, there are likely less homes than the number of people since five people can occupy one house.
Meaning a higher population may not really mean more houses. On the other hand, cars can be owned by anybody and are seen all over the place. However, with most countries opting for quality transportation, people, especially in bigger and better cities, may choose not to own a car since they are comfortable and won’t have to bother about parking lots. In some developing countries, owning a car is a luxury that many can not afford or see it as an extra expense.
And only a few may have cars they change daily, invariably limiting the number of cars. Since the above analysis can’t show whether cars or houses are more, let’s fall to research. According to the architecture and design websites, there are an estimated 2.3 billion houses and 1.45 billion cars worldwide. Comparing both numbers, there are more houses than cars in the world.
Q: Is a doorknob a wheel?
Recall a wheel can rotate, navigate and spin around an axle. So is a doorknob a wheel? Yes, a door knob is a wheel. They are referred to as wheels because of their construction pattern—consisting of wheel and axle.
Basically, a knob acts as the wheel, with the lock’s central shaft (part connecting it to the door) serving as the axle. These two parts rotate together, falling under what wheels also do. So, therefore, a doorknob is a wheel.
Final Words
Who would ever sit down and ask such questions as: are there more doors than wheels? Well, maybe not many, but Ryan asked anyway. This inevitably fueled a conversation that went on social media for long. Even when Ryan’s poll showed there are more wheels than doors, some are still not convinced.
However, with the poll and other analyses made, wheels are obviously more than doors in number. There are virtually wheels everywhere compared to the number of doors. However, while there isn’t a concrete number, there are over 38 billion wheels and over 15 billion doors, thanks to research and collective scrutiny from people around the globe.
