Why Uber's pursuing a driverless model just baffles me. This quote is for 24,000 cars for around $1.4 billion, or around $58,000 per vehicle. Even if we assum

Why Uber's pursuing a driverless model just baffles me. This quote is for 24,000 cars for around $1.4 billion, or around $58,000 per vehicle. Even if we assume 0 financing cost the car would need to earn over $58,000 in its lifetime to be more profitable for Uber to buy one of these than to continue to pay a driver. Current Uber drivers estimate their profit to be around $0.40 per mile[1] which means each driverless vehicle would need to drive about 150,000 miles just to break even. Let's guess driving that much that takes about 2 years[2]--if you assume a conservative 1 technician per 50 vehicles[3] to maintain these you also have 2% of their salary * 2 years (say another $3K). Throw in another $1000 for tabs etc, $1500 for the labor for a couple hundred car washes[4], $1000+ for losses related to crashes[5], $500 for parts and maintenance[6] and we're easily at another $7K+ in costs that have to come out of Uber's existing share. [1] https://therideshareguy.com/how-to-calculate-per-mile-earnings-instead-of-per-hour/ https://therideshareguy.com/how-to-calculate-per-mile-earnin... (This is for a 43MPG Prius, with ~$0.06/mile of depreciation. I exclude the depreciation for the calculation above, but need to add back in a similar amount for the difference in MPG.) [2] https://bizfluent.com/info-8446407-many-cab-driver-drive-yearly.html https://bizfluent.com/info-8446407-many-cab-driver-drive-yea... Estimates of how many miles per year a single taxi gets driven range here from ~40,000 to ~90,000, so 75K/year seems plausible for a fully autonomous vehicle. [3] http://www.government-fleet.com/channel/maintenance/article/story/2011/01/how-to-calculate-technician-to-vehicle-ratios.aspx http://www.government-fleet.com/channel/maintenance/article/... (This seems very conservative to me, consider for example that Hertz has about 1 employee per 13 cars.) [4] https://uberpeople.net/threads/how-often-do-you-have-to-wash-your-uber-car.152854/ https://uberpeople.net/threads/how-often-do-you-have-to-wash... [5] Estimated from average of 1 claim per 18 years per driver and $7500 in cost per accident https://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2011/07/27/how-many-times-will-you-crash-your-car/#6a1805644e62 https://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2011/07/27/how-man... http://www.tavss.com/library/va-nc-lawyer-economic-and-comprehensive-auto-accident-costs.cfm http://www.tavss.com/library/va-nc-lawyer-economic-and-compr... [6] https://www.yourmechanic.com/estimates/volvo https://www.yourmechanic.com/estimates/volvo