Others may be profitable, but I'm skeptical that Uber is. If you talk to many drivers, you'll find a common theme that "bonuses" make up a substantial fraction

Others may be profitable, but I'm skeptical that Uber is. If you talk to many drivers, you'll find a common theme that "bonuses" make up a substantial fraction of their overall income (bonuses are things like "Drive XX rides in a week and get $YYY"). To my understanding, most/all of these bonuses are placed under the accounting budget (under the premise that these bonuses are intended to bring new drivers onto the platform), not the rideshare budget. So rideshare cost of operations doesn't properly reflect the true cost of operating the rideshare business, which means that unit economics are worse than they appear in Uber's reporting (possibly even negative).