[gruez]

> I wonder how many instacart/uber orders I would need to have to offset the cost of a car, assuming I can bike to most of my needs.

Not that much. One site[1] lists the TCO of a compact car at around $33k/year if you drive it for 15k mi/year for 5 years. That works out to $550/month. Of course, if you're comparing this to getting ubers, there's no way that you'll be driving anywhere near 15k mi/year, so the TCO of a comparable car is probably $450/month. That's a lot of money to spend on uber/instacart, but keep in mind that if you have a modest commute of $20 each way, that only works out to 11 round-trips a month, or half the working days. So if your lifestyle is such that you don't need to drive to work most days, and you don't any other similar uses for cars (eg. picking up kids from school and/or driving them to extracurriculars), then by all means uber everywhere rather than owning a car.

[1] https://www.kbb.com/new-cars/total-cost-of-ownership/

[postmortembees]

I've got an ebike that takes me anywhere within ~10 miles easily, including picking up/drop off kids), and I'm a remote worker (though I could bike to the office easily.)