[aetherson]

Uber has recently made it irritatingly difficult to figure out what their rates are, so let's go with Lyft, which has very similar prices. Their SF rates are $1.35 per mile[1] -- assuming that you never have a waiting fee, never hit a minimum fare, and never pay during surge pricing (yes, yes, "prime time tips"), and, mysteriously, never pay their "safety" fee.

If you drive 7,000 miles a year (so, about 5,000 miles less than average), that's $9,450 dollars per year.

The TCO of a Honda Civic, assuming 15,000 miles a year (more than twice what we're assuming for the Lyft rider!) is on average a couple thousand dollars less per year [2].

Rideshare is not a reasonable substitute for car ownership for anyone who is cost-conscious, and it will never be until and unless autonomous vehicles exist.

[1] https://www.lyft.com/help?article=1263247 [2] http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2014/tco.html?style=20049...

[kylefox]

Fair point — but doesn't this assume price per mile remains constant over time?

[aetherson]

Well, I was making very conservative assumptions about true cost per mile. The real cost per mile could decrease substantially before it catches up to the numbers I put in my post.

And there are some pretty hard lower bounds on this. Drivers gotta eat, man. At $1.36 per mile, if you get 20 paid miles per hour (which I don't think anyone genuinely does on a regular basis), that's $26.72 per hour -- gross. Take away 20% for Lyft, driver's making $21.38 an hour. Take away $2 for gas for those 20 miles, it's $19.38. Another $1 for maintenance costs, and you've got a real income, pre-tax, of about $36k for a year of full-time work. There may be some room for downward pressure on that price, but there isn't a lot.

(In actual fact, I assume that average per-mile prices for Lyft rides are much higher than $1.36, due to prime time tips and wait time).