Metric Horsepower (PS)

Metric (SI)Current unit

Exactly 735.49875 watts, the power to lift 75 kilograms by one meter in one second. Called PS, CV or pk and used for car engines in Europe and Asia.

1 metric horsepower = 735.49875 watts (exactly).

About the metric horsepower

Continental Europe built its own horsepower on kilograms and meters instead of pounds and feet. The metric horsepower, written PS from the German Pferdestarke, is the power needed to lift 75 kilograms by one meter in one second, or 75 kilogram-force meters per second. The German standard DIN 66036 gives its value as 735.49875 W, about 98.6 percent of the imperial horsepower. It goes by many local names, among them cv in Italian and Portuguese, pk in Dutch, ch in French and hk in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

It had a French predecessor in the poncelet, a 19th-century unit based on 100 kgf-m/s. In 1972 the European Economic Community replaced PS with the kilowatt as its official unit for power, yet car brochures in many countries still quote PS or its cousins alongside kilowatts. When comparing a European car with an American one, remember that the two horsepowers differ by about 1.4 percent.

Sources: Wikipedia: Metric horsepower; Wikipedia: Horsepower

Metric Horsepower conversion chart

1 metric horsepower expressed in every other power unit:

More Metric (SI) units

• watt (power)
• kilowatt (power)
• megawatt (power)
• gigawatt (power)
• milliwatt (power)
• meter (length)
• kilometer (length)
• centimeter (length)
• millimeter (length)
• micrometer (length)
• nanometer (length)
• picometer (length)
• decimeter (length)
• hectometer (length)
• decameter (length)
• kilogram (weight & mass)

All Metric (SI) units

Browse all power units.