Every rental site says its seven-seater seats seven. Almost none of them tells you what the last two seats are like, because the honest answer costs bookings.
We put people in the Ertiga’s third row every day, so here is the honest answer.
The two-to-three hour rule
Adults are comfortable in the third row for about two to three hours.
That is not a cautious estimate. It is the point at which people reliably start shifting position, and it is remarkably consistent — a temple run, an airport transfer with traffic, a short intercity hop, all fine. A five-hour drive, and the person back there will mention it.
Children are a different case entirely. For children the third row is effectively unlimited, and many prefer it. If two of your six are under about twelve, most of what follows stops applying.
Why it gets uncomfortable — the actual reason
It is not width and it is not headroom.
The seat base sits low relative to the floor. So an adult sits with knees raised rather than out in front, and the thigh is unsupported. That posture is perfectly fine for twenty minutes and gradually stops being fine.
This matters because it means the discomfort builds rather than being obvious when you get in. Passengers who tried the seat in a car park and said it was fine are describing a genuinely different experience from three hours on the road.
The thing nobody asks for, that actually helps
Slide the middle row forward.
The second row moves fore and aft. Two or three inches forward transforms the space behind it, and costs the middle-row passengers very little — particularly if they are the shorter members of the group.
Almost nobody asks. Drivers will do it if you mention it, and on a three-hour run it is the single most effective thing available.
Second: decide who sits there before you get to the car. That conversation at 5am in a car park with luggage on the pavement is worse than having it the day before.
Ghat roads make it harder
Three hours in the third row on a smooth highway and three hours on a sequence of hairpins are not equivalent. On a mountain road you are being moved around as well as sitting, and the same duration feels considerably longer.
On the Valparai and long Munnar climbs we would shorten the threshold rather than stretch it.
What we do about it
We ask two questions when you book: how many people, and how many hours. Six adults and six hours, and we will tell you to take a larger vehicle and arrange one.
That costs us the occasional fare. It costs considerably less than the review that follows a booking we should have refused — and it is the reason this page exists at all rather than a paragraph about comfort and class-leading space.
If you are weighing this against a larger car, Ertiga or Innova puts the two side by side, and is an Ertiga enough for six adults works through the group-size question.