7 ms·

Really? Do you find Uber and Lyft to be affordable or a financially sensible means of regular transportation?

jimkleiber 4y ago
One of the main costs is labor. Another is fuel. Get rid of labor and if fuel gets cheaper (I assume electricity, because it can come from more sources than gas, will get cheaper over time), then I assume these services will be cheaper. Plus, car ownership is not that cheap either.
- dinkumthinkum 4y ago
  Car ownership is a lot cheaper than Uber. It’s not even a question. You could buy an overpriced car that you can’t afford with a high interest rate and it would still be much cheaper. I think you need to go back to first principles on this one.
  - dtgriscom 4y ago
    > Car ownership is a lot cheaper than Uber. It’s not even a question. Well, yes it is. Cars are expensive: lease ($200+/month), maintenance ($100/mo), gas ($50/mo), insurance ($120/month), garage ($200/month). WAG of $670/month. That's 15 to 40 short-ish Uber rides/month. Commute an hour each way every day, and have free parking? Buy that car. Have it available for occasional trips to the grocery store? Uber is almost certainly cheaper. And, if autonomous taxis become real then the price will go down even further.
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      Leasing a car is the most expensive way to own a car (short of buying a new one every 3 years). Of course if you're paying $200/mo. for parking you can probably afford it. In much of the country parking is indirectly subsidized with zoning laws. This is all moot because, if driving places gets cheaper, traffic will get worse, which was the original point.
      - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
        Sone companies in the United States have fancy things like parking lots. In fact, most places people work have parking lots that are free.
        aidenn0 4y ago
        I assume gp was talking about parking at home, not at work
    - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
      What? Your math is still not working out. Are you one of the lucky that have $1 Uber rides or something? 40 rides? You make 40 trips a month? Really? Try more like $40 a day just to start and that’s with no kids. At some point we have to talk about reality if we are making claims. Also, once you pay a car off (perhaps you buy it with cash), how does this math to continue to work out?
  - jimkleiber 4y ago
    Car ownership may be cheaper based on where one lives. One lives in a rural area and commutes everyday to a suburb where parking is free? Probably much cheaper than taking an Uber. Live in a city where parking is $40 per day and a parking space at an apartment is $500/month and work from home? Uber may be significantly cheaper than owning a car. If we go to first principles, I think what would matter the most is at least how often someone uses a car, how one uses it, and where one lives, to determine whether ownership or renting (Uber is just very short-term rental with a driver included, no?) is cheaper in total cost.
  - ninkendo 4y ago
    Let’s say I use a car once a year. Just how would owning a car be cheaper than getting an uber that one time per year? Now do the same math for driving 5 times a day. Do you see why you can’t just say “Car ownership is cheaper than Uber”, unqualified?
    - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
      Really? … Well, that is just an excellent point …
throwaway894345 4y ago
The idea is that the cost of a ride would go way down because you don’t need to compensate a driver.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Assuming no deadheading and equivalent vehicle costs, you're probably looking at about 50% of current Uber costs if there were autonomous vehicles today. Whether that qualifies as "way down" I guess is a matter of perspective.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    EVs also reduce the fuel costs considerably (probably also the maintenance costs).
jupp0r 4y ago
Not paying a human to do the driving would make Uber/Lyft much cheaper, it's the dominant cost component of a ride if you do the math.
- rntp 4y ago
  hold up hold up hold up. So there was a recent article (in Slate, I believe?) by someone who had driven for Lyft ten years ago and who did it a little bit this year just to see how it changed. They said that the chief thing was that Lyft's take was significantly larger than it used to be, about 40% of the total fares collected. Which, like, you're looking at that and it seems reasonable, right? Let's step into our time machine, though, and look at fare breakdowns in the taxi era, where the way you got a ride was by calling up a dispatcher who would send out a car. In that era, drivers got to take home about 85% of the total fares. So: we've gone from a non-automated system where the driver makes a supermajority of the money, to a more-automated system where the driver is taking in significantly less. And I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "A ha! The driver is taking in more than half the money! You are simply proving my point~!!1!" Here's the deal: * Less importantly: the cost of auto maintenance, something that would have to be carried by the company if the car were self-driving, falls upon the driver * More importantly: for some reason I cannot begin to intuit, rideshare companies have managed to introduce vastly more overhead costs, even though one would expect that going from a human-dispatch to an automatic-dispatch system would cut overhead. I suspect that if one of the rideshare companies actually rolled out working self-driving cars (so Waymo, not Tesla), they would somehow find a way to make rides actually more expensive.
  - dgoodell 4y ago
    What I don’t understand is WHY these more automated systems cost so much. And it’s not like there isn’t competition, we have both Lyft and Uber overlapping in many places and people can chose between them. I’d really like to see a chart or something shows where Lyft/Uber fees goes. There has to be a lot of inefficiencies. My suspicion is there is a lot of white collar bloat.
    - 4y ago
oefrha 4y ago
$20/day on cabs is cheaper than owning a $50k car.
- dinkumthinkum 4y ago
  $20? Where do you use Uber? In a rural area to go 2 miles?
- potatoman22 4y ago
  Good thing you can buy a car for $5k
- turdprincess 4y ago
  I'm not so sure. AAA estimates that it costs $10,728 to own and operate a new vehicle per year which is driven 15,0000 miles per year. This includes all the costs like depreciation, maintenance, gas, insurance, etc, and works out to be $0.71 per mile. At least in my town, Ubers are more expensive than that. I can't seem to find a trip anywhere for under $15, even if its a few miles away, or like $3 per mile. Longer trips are more economical, but for example, my airport (40 miles away) is quoting me $80 at the moment, or $2 per mile. Also, these prices don't include tip. I think if you lived in a big city with public transportation and occasionally took Uber, it would be more economical than a car. But as a 100% replacement, Ubers appear to be 3 to 5 times more expensive than having your own car. And by the way, that AAA data is from a brand new car. You can easily go cheaper by getting a reliable used car. source: https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-ownership-crosses-10k-mark/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-owne...
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    Bikes are essentially free. Prefer bikes, then fail to public transit (there's typically more options than you expect, once you start exploring; also you can often bring your bike...), and only then fail to Uber.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mewpmewp2 4y ago
I don't own a car, and I use Uber etc for everywhere I go. In the end it's cheaper for me than to own a car.

One of the main costs is labor. Another is fuel. Get rid of labor and if fuel gets cheaper (I assume electricity, because it can come from more sources than gas, will get cheaper over time), then I assume these services will be cheaper. Plus, car ownership is not that cheap either.

dinkumthinkum 4y ago
Car ownership is a lot cheaper than Uber. It’s not even a question. You could buy an overpriced car that you can’t afford with a high interest rate and it would still be much cheaper. I think you need to go back to first principles on this one.
- dtgriscom 4y ago
  > Car ownership is a lot cheaper than Uber. It’s not even a question. Well, yes it is. Cars are expensive: lease ($200+/month), maintenance ($100/mo), gas ($50/mo), insurance ($120/month), garage ($200/month). WAG of $670/month. That's 15 to 40 short-ish Uber rides/month. Commute an hour each way every day, and have free parking? Buy that car. Have it available for occasional trips to the grocery store? Uber is almost certainly cheaper. And, if autonomous taxis become real then the price will go down even further.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Leasing a car is the most expensive way to own a car (short of buying a new one every 3 years). Of course if you're paying $200/mo. for parking you can probably afford it. In much of the country parking is indirectly subsidized with zoning laws. This is all moot because, if driving places gets cheaper, traffic will get worse, which was the original point.
    - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
      Sone companies in the United States have fancy things like parking lots. In fact, most places people work have parking lots that are free.
      - aidenn0 4y ago
        I assume gp was talking about parking at home, not at work
  - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
    What? Your math is still not working out. Are you one of the lucky that have $1 Uber rides or something? 40 rides? You make 40 trips a month? Really? Try more like $40 a day just to start and that’s with no kids. At some point we have to talk about reality if we are making claims. Also, once you pay a car off (perhaps you buy it with cash), how does this math to continue to work out?
- jimkleiber 4y ago
  Car ownership may be cheaper based on where one lives. One lives in a rural area and commutes everyday to a suburb where parking is free? Probably much cheaper than taking an Uber. Live in a city where parking is $40 per day and a parking space at an apartment is $500/month and work from home? Uber may be significantly cheaper than owning a car. If we go to first principles, I think what would matter the most is at least how often someone uses a car, how one uses it, and where one lives, to determine whether ownership or renting (Uber is just very short-term rental with a driver included, no?) is cheaper in total cost.
- ninkendo 4y ago
  Let’s say I use a car once a year. Just how would owning a car be cheaper than getting an uber that one time per year? Now do the same math for driving 5 times a day. Do you see why you can’t just say “Car ownership is cheaper than Uber”, unqualified?
  - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
    Really? … Well, that is just an excellent point …

throwaway894345 4y ago

The idea is that the cost of a ride would go way down because you don’t need to compensate a driver.

ghaff 4y ago
Assuming no deadheading and equivalent vehicle costs, you're probably looking at about 50% of current Uber costs if there were autonomous vehicles today. Whether that qualifies as "way down" I guess is a matter of perspective.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  EVs also reduce the fuel costs considerably (probably also the maintenance costs).

jupp0r 4y ago

Not paying a human to do the driving would make Uber/Lyft much cheaper, it's the dominant cost component of a ride if you do the math.

rntp 4y ago
hold up hold up hold up. So there was a recent article (in Slate, I believe?) by someone who had driven for Lyft ten years ago and who did it a little bit this year just to see how it changed. They said that the chief thing was that Lyft's take was significantly larger than it used to be, about 40% of the total fares collected. Which, like, you're looking at that and it seems reasonable, right? Let's step into our time machine, though, and look at fare breakdowns in the taxi era, where the way you got a ride was by calling up a dispatcher who would send out a car. In that era, drivers got to take home about 85% of the total fares. So: we've gone from a non-automated system where the driver makes a supermajority of the money, to a more-automated system where the driver is taking in significantly less. And I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "A ha! The driver is taking in more than half the money! You are simply proving my point~!!1!" Here's the deal: * Less importantly: the cost of auto maintenance, something that would have to be carried by the company if the car were self-driving, falls upon the driver * More importantly: for some reason I cannot begin to intuit, rideshare companies have managed to introduce vastly more overhead costs, even though one would expect that going from a human-dispatch to an automatic-dispatch system would cut overhead. I suspect that if one of the rideshare companies actually rolled out working self-driving cars (so Waymo, not Tesla), they would somehow find a way to make rides actually more expensive.
- dgoodell 4y ago
  What I don’t understand is WHY these more automated systems cost so much. And it’s not like there isn’t competition, we have both Lyft and Uber overlapping in many places and people can chose between them. I’d really like to see a chart or something shows where Lyft/Uber fees goes. There has to be a lot of inefficiencies. My suspicion is there is a lot of white collar bloat.
  - 4y ago

oefrha 4y ago

$20/day on cabs is cheaper than owning a $50k car.

dinkumthinkum 4y ago
$20? Where do you use Uber? In a rural area to go 2 miles?
potatoman22 4y ago
Good thing you can buy a car for $5k
turdprincess 4y ago
I'm not so sure. AAA estimates that it costs $10,728 to own and operate a new vehicle per year which is driven 15,0000 miles per year. This includes all the costs like depreciation, maintenance, gas, insurance, etc, and works out to be $0.71 per mile. At least in my town, Ubers are more expensive than that. I can't seem to find a trip anywhere for under $15, even if its a few miles away, or like $3 per mile. Longer trips are more economical, but for example, my airport (40 miles away) is quoting me $80 at the moment, or $2 per mile. Also, these prices don't include tip. I think if you lived in a big city with public transportation and occasionally took Uber, it would be more economical than a car. But as a 100% replacement, Ubers appear to be 3 to 5 times more expensive than having your own car. And by the way, that AAA data is from a brand new car. You can easily go cheaper by getting a reliable used car. source: https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-ownership-crosses-10k-mark/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-owne...
- sdenton4 4y ago
  Bikes are essentially free. Prefer bikes, then fail to public transit (there's typically more options than you expect, once you start exploring; also you can often bring your bike...), and only then fail to Uber.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mewpmewp2 4y ago

I don't own a car, and I use Uber etc for everywhere I go. In the end it's cheaper for me than to own a car.