I spent a few weeks in Hong Kong recently and the vast majority of my UberBLACK Sedans were Tesla Model S, many with the insane mode / ludicrous mode / whatever it's called that unlocks the rapid acceleration. They were more than happy to demonstrate it too, which was fun.
Discussing the sustainability, they noted that after the purchase of the car, running costs were effectively free. Due to subsidies provided by the government, there is no refuelling charge, and as an electric car, it's not subject to emissions laws e.g. requirement to turn your car off if stationary for more than 2 mins, not allowed to be stationary for more than 2 minutes with air conditioning turned on.
Two of the drivers I spoke to intended to buy more Teslas for their family for this reason, one already had another one on order.
The bed-in-the back configuration he set up is pretty nifty. I wish more cars had back seats that would fold forward to allow that (or for carrying heavy loads).
Maybe it's different where you live, but I'm in UK and I see lots of Teslas as taxis(uber or other) - it just makes perfect sense. Even though the lease on a Tesla is very expensive compared to a regular car, it's much much much cheaper to run(especially with petrol/diesel being around $7-8/US gallon), requires a lot less maintenance, and retains strong value over time. So actually, buying a Tesla to drive as a taxi is very attractive, and I wouldn't be surprised if these two diagrams were actually very closely overlapping.
This is an ignorant statement. In Hong Kong, I've been ubered in a lot of Teslas. The Teslas are owned by rich families, and the driver uses the cars on the side.
I'm not familiar enough with the pricing details to disagree with you, but it's worth mentioning that a Model S can be used for the UberLux service (~3x more expensive than UberX).
Uber pays over a dollar per mile for UberX. The GSA rate for autos now is $0.54/mile, which is intended to be an "all-in" figure for operating costs.
I think there's room for profiting from driving Uber. (I also agree that it's a good bit less than it appears based on the cash-in and cash-out every week.)
Discussing the sustainability, they noted that after the purchase of the car, running costs were effectively free. Due to subsidies provided by the government, there is no refuelling charge, and as an electric car, it's not subject to emissions laws e.g. requirement to turn your car off if stationary for more than 2 mins, not allowed to be stationary for more than 2 minutes with air conditioning turned on.
Two of the drivers I spoke to intended to buy more Teslas for their family for this reason, one already had another one on order.