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”Obayashi envisages a space elevator using six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people, connected by a cable”

I can’t see how one would read that other than as each car holding 30 people.

You would need an extra comma to make it six cars holding 30 people in total:

”Obayashi envisages a space elevator using six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m, holding 30 people, connected by a cable”

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I read it as the entire elevator carrying 30 people, and this article seems to confirm it (https://www.zmescience.com/research/japanese-space-elevator-...)

Having 30 people in one car including gear, provisions and sharing sanitation seems absurdly small if not logistically impossible

But the original sentence is ungrammatical either way. Under your interpretation there’s still a missing “and”: “each measuring 18m x 7.2m and holding 30 people”.

The missing "and" is a tiny grammatical error, whereas the missing "," Someone mentioned is a large grammatical error. Tiny grammatical errors are OK -- language grammars change over time because many people start making the same tiny grammatical error until it becomes part of the accepted grammar of the language.

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