You are correct that running a car into the ground is the way to make money as a taxi service. There's a reason used taxis have like 500,000+ miles on them. H

You are correct that running a car into the ground is the way to make money as a taxi service. There's a reason used taxis have like 500,000+ miles on them. However, to drive for Uber, you have to have a car newer than 10 years old This means, you're going to take the bulk of the depreciation hit on a car. We can debate whether driving ten, 9-year old cars for a year each results in less depreciation than a single new car driven for ten years. But either way, you can't drive a car into the ground using Uber like you can with delivering pizzas or running a taxi service because they specifically prohibit the use of beaters. You have to pay for depreciation. Depreciation is entirely vehicle dependent, but using the IRS reimbursement guidelines of ~$0.56/mi is quite reasonable when talking about <10yo vehicles.