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I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at all cheaper. Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right

I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at all cheaper. Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right now. Lyft wants $13.40 $11.50 * 2 = $23/day 23 * 5 = $115/week $115 * 52 weeks = $5980/year (I am ignoring vacation weeks for now.) My yearly cost for car ownership are roughly as follows. (Assuming only work and back.) Insurance(1): $886/year Fuel(2): $292.50 Maintenance(3): $1000 Car purchase price(4): $1000 Total yearly cost: $3178 (1) I only run Liablilty + uninsured/underinsured but I run cheap cars (2) 2340 miles/year (Work is just under 4.5 miles.) Figure 20 mpg (I get better but have not calculated it in a while.) Figuring fuel prices at $2.50 although the last year has been much closer to $2 and less at times (3) This is way more than I would put into a car yearly if I only drove it to work and back but I do many of my own repairs so I am boosting it a bit for those unwilling to do so. Also including stuff like taxes and tags here (4)I buy cheap cars off craigslist, run them into the ground and replace them. My normal cost is $500-600 but by the time you add a new set of tires ($250-300 installed) and fix whatever random issues the car came with $1000 is closer to actual purchase price.

brianjoseff 9y ago
I also derive tremendous personal value from getting the opportunity to meet the people driving the cars. Hearing different perspectives, sharing interesting stories, and generally engaging in real human interaction are something I don't get enough of in my regular life, and Lyft has materially changed that. Of course unfortunate that I don't get enough of that outside of a transactional transportation arrangement, but it's real for me.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  I really appreciate you mentioning this. I occasionally drive for Lyft just to meet new people.
tgarv 9y ago
So you're using your own time to repair these cars to keep the cost down, which is totally fine, but I think it's unfair to not count some of that time as a "cost" of owning the car in your model. Also, do you not have to pay for parking anywhere? What about time spent finding parking (again, may not be an issue, but it certainly would be time-consuming and expensive where I live and work).
- rconti 9y ago
  I think the $1000/yr for maintenance cited is way more than enough to cover it.
jdonaldson 9y ago
What city do you live in? Do you pay for parking?
debt 9y ago
Maintenance is time too. So pulling over and getting gas, bringing a car in for an oil change/replacing air filter/shocks/tire realignment etc. You have to get smog checks regularly. Parking tickets, speeding tickets, street cleaning. Maybe even a parking sticker. Also, don't ever get into an accident. I think a range depending on your risk profile makes more sense. Low end would be $3178 high end might be double that. Do you drink/smoke weed/sleepy as hell and drive ever? Owning a car puts you at a higher risk for paying much more for making poor driving mistakes whereas a comparable situation wouldn't hold you personally liable for the same mistakes if it happen in a ride-sharing car. On top of all this, you run your car into the ground and regularly buy a new one? You've grossly underestimated the cost of owning a car to a frustrating degree. Owning a car blows if you live in a city.
- fossuser 9y ago
  You don't necessarily need to buy a junker to have an inexpensive car. You can lease a Fiat 500e for $90/month in California (which is what I do). That has the added benefit of removing fuel costs too.
  - prklmn 9y ago
    Just out of curiosity, what's the yearly milage limit on that lease?
    - fossuser 9y ago
      10,000 miles - it was also $4000 down, but you get $2500 back from the California EV incentive program so it comes to $1500 down and $90/month for a three year lease. You can get lucky and find deals where the money down is even lower. I missed one where it was $1500 down so CA was basically paying you $1000 to take the car (or if you factor in the monthly fee cost around $60 a month). Part of the reason for this is that it's a compliance car. I think the way it works is CA requires the MPG of your fleet to meet some very high standard. In order to meet this manufacturers that want to sell in the state make an EV with a very high MPGe that helps the average. Then they have to sell a certain number of them (it can't exist in name only). You can end up getting lucky. [Edit] Looks like my understanding of the compliance car bit was wrong, seems to be just a hard requirement to sell some amount of zero emissions vehicles: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-compliance-car-85648 https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-compliance-car-85648
foota 9y ago
I would imagine most people ditching their cars rely on some combination of transit options.
jonknee 9y ago
Not everyone has beater cars that they work on themselves and park for free. Where I live it's $300 or more a month to park which would be more than your whole annual cost even if you get free parking at either home or work.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jtchang 9y ago
Your insurance number is pretty low. Also I'd say most people don't buy $1000 cars.
- Retric 9y ago
  He said per year. If you buy a 10,000$ car every 10 years that's 1,000$/year. Also, if you don't drive much you can average less than 1,000$/year in depreciation without driving a junker.
  - birdman3131 9y ago
    Yah. I usually get 2-4 years out of a car but I figured I would offset the fact that I run real cheap cars by adding it in yearly.
cafard 9y ago
I can't park for much less than $20 in downtown Washington, DC. Now, if I had to drive, I could get monthly parking, but that seems to run $250/month on up. Maybe an employer would subsidize that, maybe not.
whytookay 9y ago
I think it depends on your parking circumstances too. I know that in the city I live in, the average monthly parking is $250 (probably higher near where I work) Additionally, many apartments and condos in the city charge $100 per month to have a parking spot. Right there you're increasing your car ownership costs by $4200/year. Also, the model of buying burner cars is fine in certain circumstances, but many people aren't willing to deal with that additional overhead in car ownership.
yardie 9y ago
Because of uninsured/underinsured drivers in my city insurance is one of the highest in the country. $250/mo is the avg quote I got. That's down from $280/mo after the first year because I haven't had insurance for years. The only cars I see in that 500-1k range have basically been worn to pieces, smell of cigarettes, smell of mildew, or the suspension is completely bottomed out.
dguaraglia 9y ago
Overnight parking in San Francisco, for most people renting: ~$200 a month (last time I checked was closer to $250, so who knows what's up to now.) Daily parking in San Francisco (if, say, you have to park at work): ~$20 a day, although you might get some tax benefits on this. Annoyance of finding a parking spot anywhere in San Francisco at any of the times you might want to use the car to meet friends (lunch, dinner, weekends): very, very high. Annoyance of not being able to drink more than one drink: varies by person. So, YMMV. If you live and work in a heavily car-based city (say Minneapolis) then using Lyft or Uber won't make much sense. If you live in a metropolis with decent public or company provided transportation for commuting, then it's cheaper to use Lyft for going out and getting the occasional ZipCar or Thrifty whenever you travel for the weekend.
paxy 9y ago
Those numbers are going to be very different for different people depending on their situation, especially if they live in a dense metropolitan area. When I owned a car parking costs alone justified a move to Uber/Lyft. I now use commuter dollars and Uber Pool for daily commute (~$5 each way before tax savings). Plus most people rely on a combination of Uber/Lyft, public transit, bike shares, car rentals etc. rather than a single option.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  Why don't people in cities lobby to put restrictions on parking fees?
klodolph 9y ago
That's the same calculation people do when thinking about vegetarianism or veganism. What's the benefit of replacing all of your turkey with tofurkey? Well, no, most vegetarians don't simply replace all of their meat with fake meat any more than people with cars replace all of their rides with Lyft. Consider: * Many households have two cars. I might "ditch owning a personal car" if I know I can occasionally borrow one, or if my husband/wife/etc can drop me off at work a couple days a week, and maybe I can use Lyft sometimes when the household car isn't available. * Many people don't drive to work even if they have a car. Maybe you own a car for occasional errands. * The cost of parking in some cities is prohibitive. Do you not pay for parking? I recognize that I live in an expensive city, but if I commuted by car I would likely be paying over $5,000 per year for parking alone. * Some people have much higher insurance costs, and not necessarily due to fault of their own (e.g. single 20-year-old male drivers). * Not everyone is willing to buy cheap cars off Craigslist, and most people don't do their own maintenance.
lazzlazzlazz 9y ago
I'm stunned you believe driving an underinsured $1,000 junker and spending time and energy to maintain it is comparable to Lyfting full time. Surely you recognize your tolerances here are an edge case.
lkbm 9y ago
It might not be "I went from driving everywhere to Lyfting everywhere". It could be "I went from driving everywhere to mixing Lyft+bus". Or "I went from driving+bus everywhere" to Lyft+bus everywhere". There are probably plenty of people who would be down to take the bus (or bike) to/from work, but keep a car around for a couple longer trips a week, or for inclement weather. AAA found average car ownership cost was over $8000/year[0]. This is pushed up by people who buy cars new, so you can certainly be lower, but that's apparently the average. We've been talking about this a fair bit at my mostly-college student house lately. I think a number people in the house would get rid of their car if they had to pay just for their own insurance--it would certainly be cheaper for a good number of them based on their current usage. But their parents pay, so we end up with an overflowing driveway. [0] http://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs/ http://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs/
ctdonath 9y ago
You're taking an upper-end Lyft case vs a remarkably low-end ownership case ... and ending up with actually fairly close numbers. Replace some of the chauffeured trips with cheaper paths (bike, hoverboard, bus, telecommute), and use more normal/realistic car costs (purchase around $20,000 over less than 10 years). Result will be much closer numbers; throw in issues like urban parking (very expensive) or higher fuel costs, and suddenly Lyft/Uber become much preferable.
- burlesona 9y ago
  This is exactly what I thought. Of course one can purchase a beater car for a small amount of money, but the cheapest car I ever bought was $3000 and I recall spending $500-1000 a year on 1-2 breakdowns a year. The inconvenience of the breakdowns was actually worse for me than the cost of repairs, as (at that time and living in that place) I couldn't get to work when the car was broken down, so I lost income in addition to losing cash for maintenance.
garethsprice 9y ago
Living in cities changes the equation. My insurance (younger driver, no history) was about $250/mo ($3k/year), car payments (again, young with no capital & no credit history) were $300/mo ($3600/year) for a modest Hyundai. Average cost for private NYC parking is $430/mo(!) or probably about half that in rent premium if you rent a (very rare) building with parking, but realistically you're parking on the street - a solid 30-45 minutes of looking for a space every time you drive and remembering to move the car when the alternate side parking rules are in effect. If you drive to work, you'll either need to work somewhere with parking, or pay for a space at the destination too - doubling parking costs. So that's up to $13k/yr to have a car in NYC, or $35/day. I could ride Uber/Lyft to work and back every day for the equivalent cost. However, most of the time I take the subway which is $116/mo (can pay out of my pre-tax payroll too so real cost is about $80) - my car would be dormant for all but a couple of trips a week & it'd just be a pain to have to move it around for parking. I have a car2go membership that I use once or twice a month (costs about $50, or $0 if I don't use it) and I use Lyft maybe a half-dozen times a week. Once or twice a year I rent a car for further drives ($150 to rent an SUV to move some furniture, or $400 to rent a Tesla from Turo for a weekend trip upstate) Far cheaper and more convenient to use ride sharing and public transport than to own a car here in NY. I have zero desire to go back to car ownership.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I'm sure. NYC (the densest parts anyway) is pretty much the canonical example of a place where it doesn't make sense to own a car. Many people still do but, as you say, the costs are high, transit is pretty good, taxis were ubiquitous even before Uber, and [Urgg EDIT: few] people are heading out of the city every weekend by car.
astura 9y ago
If you're a young male then insurance alone can approach $300 a month in some areas. You're also omitting parking, which is a very significant cost in some areas. $150+ a month. Sure, the numbers don't work for you but surely you can understand not everyone is identical to you.
burlesona 9y ago
I don't think people are typically making a spreadsheet and plotting out whether or not this is really cheaper or more expensive. What's happening is either: a) They don't have a car (or a second car) currently, they spend $X/mo on Uber, and they don't think that they could get a car they'd want to drive and/or park and/or deal with for that same amount of money. OR b) They know that they have a car sitting in their driveway / street / etc. and they're currently spending $X per month on it to mostly sit there idle, and they're pretty sure that they'd save money not using it, so they try a month of just Uber and sure enough, it cost them less than the idling car (or they just liked it better, whatever). People think a lot about yuppies in the city as the Uber crowd, but in my experience Uber / Lyft is far more impactful on families. Instead of needing 1 car per adult to function, you may need only 1 car per household, or maybe 2 cars for a family with kids in high school (as compared to what we used to call the "used car lot" in front of all the High School kids houses back when I was growing up in the burbs).
ggg9990 9y ago
You can’t compare buying $1000 cars and spending your own time repairing them to getting picked up in an Uber which is a much more modern, comfortable, and safe car, and not having to care if it breaks down (as long as it’s not during a trip!)
richardknop 9y ago
$1,000 purchase for a car? Is it just a deposit or full price for the car? I think it would be more comparable doing these calculations with some sort of median car, so medium sized sedan, 5-8 years old. Surely it would cost at least 10k to buy an average car like that? I don't think it's fair to make these comparisons using these super cheap cars as presumably better car gives you more comfort and smoother / quieter / more comfy ride experience. Average Lyft/Uber car would cost way more than $1,000 to purchase. On the other hand, the correct way of making this comparison would be to compare x years of Uber/Lyft usage vs X years of car ownership and I think 10-20k cars that you own would come out ahead in a 5 year comparison, for example (reasonable period of time, most people don't buy new cars more often than every 5+ years).

brianjoseff 9y ago

I also derive tremendous personal value from getting the opportunity to meet the people driving the cars. Hearing different perspectives, sharing interesting stories, and generally engaging in real human interaction are something I don't get enough of in my regular life, and Lyft has materially changed that. Of course unfortunate that I don't get enough of that outside of a transactional transportation arrangement, but it's real for me.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
I really appreciate you mentioning this. I occasionally drive for Lyft just to meet new people.

tgarv 9y ago

So you're using your own time to repair these cars to keep the cost down, which is totally fine, but I think it's unfair to not count some of that time as a "cost" of owning the car in your model. Also, do you not have to pay for parking anywhere? What about time spent finding parking (again, may not be an issue, but it certainly would be time-consuming and expensive where I live and work).

rconti 9y ago
I think the $1000/yr for maintenance cited is way more than enough to cover it.

jdonaldson 9y ago

What city do you live in? Do you pay for parking?

debt 9y ago

Maintenance is time too. So pulling over and getting gas, bringing a car in for an oil change/replacing air filter/shocks/tire realignment etc. You have to get smog checks regularly. Parking tickets, speeding tickets, street cleaning. Maybe even a parking sticker. Also, don't ever get into an accident. I think a range depending on your risk profile makes more sense. Low end would be $3178 high end might be double that. Do you drink/smoke weed/sleepy as hell and drive ever? Owning a car puts you at a higher risk for paying much more for making poor driving mistakes whereas a comparable situation wouldn't hold you personally liable for the same mistakes if it happen in a ride-sharing car. On top of all this, you run your car into the ground and regularly buy a new one? You've grossly underestimated the cost of owning a car to a frustrating degree. Owning a car blows if you live in a city.

fossuser 9y ago
You don't necessarily need to buy a junker to have an inexpensive car. You can lease a Fiat 500e for $90/month in California (which is what I do). That has the added benefit of removing fuel costs too.
- prklmn 9y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what's the yearly milage limit on that lease?
  - fossuser 9y ago
    10,000 miles - it was also $4000 down, but you get $2500 back from the California EV incentive program so it comes to $1500 down and $90/month for a three year lease. You can get lucky and find deals where the money down is even lower. I missed one where it was $1500 down so CA was basically paying you $1000 to take the car (or if you factor in the monthly fee cost around $60 a month). Part of the reason for this is that it's a compliance car. I think the way it works is CA requires the MPG of your fleet to meet some very high standard. In order to meet this manufacturers that want to sell in the state make an EV with a very high MPGe that helps the average. Then they have to sell a certain number of them (it can't exist in name only). You can end up getting lucky. [Edit] Looks like my understanding of the compliance car bit was wrong, seems to be just a hard requirement to sell some amount of zero emissions vehicles: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-compliance-car-85648 https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-compliance-car-85648

foota 9y ago

I would imagine most people ditching their cars rely on some combination of transit options.

jonknee 9y ago

Not everyone has beater cars that they work on themselves and park for free. Where I live it's $300 or more a month to park which would be more than your whole annual cost even if you get free parking at either home or work.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jtchang 9y ago

Your insurance number is pretty low. Also I'd say most people don't buy $1000 cars.

Retric 9y ago
He said per year. If you buy a 10,000$ car every 10 years that's 1,000$/year. Also, if you don't drive much you can average less than 1,000$/year in depreciation without driving a junker.
- birdman3131 9y ago
  Yah. I usually get 2-4 years out of a car but I figured I would offset the fact that I run real cheap cars by adding it in yearly.

cafard 9y ago

I can't park for much less than $20 in downtown Washington, DC. Now, if I had to drive, I could get monthly parking, but that seems to run $250/month on up. Maybe an employer would subsidize that, maybe not.

whytookay 9y ago

I think it depends on your parking circumstances too. I know that in the city I live in, the average monthly parking is $250 (probably higher near where I work) Additionally, many apartments and condos in the city charge $100 per month to have a parking spot. Right there you're increasing your car ownership costs by $4200/year. Also, the model of buying burner cars is fine in certain circumstances, but many people aren't willing to deal with that additional overhead in car ownership.

yardie 9y ago

Because of uninsured/underinsured drivers in my city insurance is one of the highest in the country. $250/mo is the avg quote I got. That's down from $280/mo after the first year because I haven't had insurance for years. The only cars I see in that 500-1k range have basically been worn to pieces, smell of cigarettes, smell of mildew, or the suspension is completely bottomed out.

dguaraglia 9y ago

Overnight parking in San Francisco, for most people renting: ~$200 a month (last time I checked was closer to $250, so who knows what's up to now.) Daily parking in San Francisco (if, say, you have to park at work): ~$20 a day, although you might get some tax benefits on this. Annoyance of finding a parking spot anywhere in San Francisco at any of the times you might want to use the car to meet friends (lunch, dinner, weekends): very, very high. Annoyance of not being able to drink more than one drink: varies by person. So, YMMV. If you live and work in a heavily car-based city (say Minneapolis) then using Lyft or Uber won't make much sense. If you live in a metropolis with decent public or company provided transportation for commuting, then it's cheaper to use Lyft for going out and getting the occasional ZipCar or Thrifty whenever you travel for the weekend.

paxy 9y ago

Those numbers are going to be very different for different people depending on their situation, especially if they live in a dense metropolitan area. When I owned a car parking costs alone justified a move to Uber/Lyft. I now use commuter dollars and Uber Pool for daily commute (~$5 each way before tax savings). Plus most people rely on a combination of Uber/Lyft, public transit, bike shares, car rentals etc. rather than a single option.

jimmaswell 9y ago
Why don't people in cities lobby to put restrictions on parking fees?

klodolph 9y ago

That's the same calculation people do when thinking about vegetarianism or veganism. What's the benefit of replacing all of your turkey with tofurkey? Well, no, most vegetarians don't simply replace all of their meat with fake meat any more than people with cars replace all of their rides with Lyft. Consider: * Many households have two cars. I might "ditch owning a personal car" if I know I can occasionally borrow one, or if my husband/wife/etc can drop me off at work a couple days a week, and maybe I can use Lyft sometimes when the household car isn't available. * Many people don't drive to work even if they have a car. Maybe you own a car for occasional errands. * The cost of parking in some cities is prohibitive. Do you not pay for parking? I recognize that I live in an expensive city, but if I commuted by car I would likely be paying over $5,000 per year for parking alone. * Some people have much higher insurance costs, and not necessarily due to fault of their own (e.g. single 20-year-old male drivers). * Not everyone is willing to buy cheap cars off Craigslist, and most people don't do their own maintenance.

lazzlazzlazz 9y ago

I'm stunned you believe driving an underinsured $1,000 junker and spending time and energy to maintain it is comparable to Lyfting full time. Surely you recognize your tolerances here are an edge case.

lkbm 9y ago

It might not be "I went from driving everywhere to Lyfting everywhere". It could be "I went from driving everywhere to mixing Lyft+bus". Or "I went from driving+bus everywhere" to Lyft+bus everywhere". There are probably plenty of people who would be down to take the bus (or bike) to/from work, but keep a car around for a couple longer trips a week, or for inclement weather. AAA found average car ownership cost was over $8000/year[0]. This is pushed up by people who buy cars new, so you can certainly be lower, but that's apparently the average. We've been talking about this a fair bit at my mostly-college student house lately. I think a number people in the house would get rid of their car if they had to pay just for their own insurance--it would certainly be cheaper for a good number of them based on their current usage. But their parents pay, so we end up with an overflowing driveway. [0] http://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs/ http://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs/

ctdonath 9y ago

You're taking an upper-end Lyft case vs a remarkably low-end ownership case ... and ending up with actually fairly close numbers. Replace some of the chauffeured trips with cheaper paths (bike, hoverboard, bus, telecommute), and use more normal/realistic car costs (purchase around $20,000 over less than 10 years). Result will be much closer numbers; throw in issues like urban parking (very expensive) or higher fuel costs, and suddenly Lyft/Uber become much preferable.

burlesona 9y ago
This is exactly what I thought. Of course one can purchase a beater car for a small amount of money, but the cheapest car I ever bought was $3000 and I recall spending $500-1000 a year on 1-2 breakdowns a year. The inconvenience of the breakdowns was actually worse for me than the cost of repairs, as (at that time and living in that place) I couldn't get to work when the car was broken down, so I lost income in addition to losing cash for maintenance.

garethsprice 9y ago

Living in cities changes the equation. My insurance (younger driver, no history) was about $250/mo ($3k/year), car payments (again, young with no capital & no credit history) were $300/mo ($3600/year) for a modest Hyundai. Average cost for private NYC parking is $430/mo(!) or probably about half that in rent premium if you rent a (very rare) building with parking, but realistically you're parking on the street - a solid 30-45 minutes of looking for a space every time you drive and remembering to move the car when the alternate side parking rules are in effect. If you drive to work, you'll either need to work somewhere with parking, or pay for a space at the destination too - doubling parking costs. So that's up to $13k/yr to have a car in NYC, or $35/day. I could ride Uber/Lyft to work and back every day for the equivalent cost. However, most of the time I take the subway which is $116/mo (can pay out of my pre-tax payroll too so real cost is about $80) - my car would be dormant for all but a couple of trips a week & it'd just be a pain to have to move it around for parking. I have a car2go membership that I use once or twice a month (costs about $50, or $0 if I don't use it) and I use Lyft maybe a half-dozen times a week. Once or twice a year I rent a car for further drives ($150 to rent an SUV to move some furniture, or $400 to rent a Tesla from Turo for a weekend trip upstate) Far cheaper and more convenient to use ride sharing and public transport than to own a car here in NY. I have zero desire to go back to car ownership.

ghaff 9y ago
I'm sure. NYC (the densest parts anyway) is pretty much the canonical example of a place where it doesn't make sense to own a car. Many people still do but, as you say, the costs are high, transit is pretty good, taxis were ubiquitous even before Uber, and [Urgg EDIT: few] people are heading out of the city every weekend by car.

astura 9y ago

If you're a young male then insurance alone can approach $300 a month in some areas. You're also omitting parking, which is a very significant cost in some areas. $150+ a month. Sure, the numbers don't work for you but surely you can understand not everyone is identical to you.

burlesona 9y ago

I don't think people are typically making a spreadsheet and plotting out whether or not this is really cheaper or more expensive. What's happening is either: a) They don't have a car (or a second car) currently, they spend $X/mo on Uber, and they don't think that they could get a car they'd want to drive and/or park and/or deal with for that same amount of money. OR b) They know that they have a car sitting in their driveway / street / etc. and they're currently spending $X per month on it to mostly sit there idle, and they're pretty sure that they'd save money not using it, so they try a month of just Uber and sure enough, it cost them less than the idling car (or they just liked it better, whatever). People think a lot about yuppies in the city as the Uber crowd, but in my experience Uber / Lyft is far more impactful on families. Instead of needing 1 car per adult to function, you may need only 1 car per household, or maybe 2 cars for a family with kids in high school (as compared to what we used to call the "used car lot" in front of all the High School kids houses back when I was growing up in the burbs).

ggg9990 9y ago

You can’t compare buying $1000 cars and spending your own time repairing them to getting picked up in an Uber which is a much more modern, comfortable, and safe car, and not having to care if it breaks down (as long as it’s not during a trip!)

richardknop 9y ago

$1,000 purchase for a car? Is it just a deposit or full price for the car? I think it would be more comparable doing these calculations with some sort of median car, so medium sized sedan, 5-8 years old. Surely it would cost at least 10k to buy an average car like that? I don't think it's fair to make these comparisons using these super cheap cars as presumably better car gives you more comfort and smoother / quieter / more comfy ride experience. Average Lyft/Uber car would cost way more than $1,000 to purchase. On the other hand, the correct way of making this comparison would be to compare x years of Uber/Lyft usage vs X years of car ownership and I think 10-20k cars that you own would come out ahead in a 5 year comparison, for example (reasonable period of time, most people don't buy new cars more often than every 5+ years).