That's the same calculation people do when thinking about vegetarianism or veganism. What's the benefit of replacing all of your turkey with tofurkey? Well, no, most vegetarians don't simply replace all of their meat with fake meat any more than people with cars replace all of their rides with Lyft.

Consider:

* Many households have two cars. I might "ditch owning a personal car" if I know I can occasionally borrow one, or if my husband/wife/etc can drop me off at work a couple days a week, and maybe I can use Lyft sometimes when the household car isn't available.

* Many people don't drive to work even if they have a car. Maybe you own a car for occasional errands.

* The cost of parking in some cities is prohibitive. Do you not pay for parking? I recognize that I live in an expensive city, but if I commuted by car I would likely be paying over $5,000 per year for parking alone.

* Some people have much higher insurance costs, and not necessarily due to fault of their own (e.g. single 20-year-old male drivers).

* Not everyone is willing to buy cheap cars off Craigslist, and most people don't do their own maintenance.

Maintenance is time too. So pulling over and getting gas, bringing a car in for an oil change/replacing air filter/shocks/tire realignment etc.

You have to get smog checks regularly. Parking tickets, speeding tickets, street cleaning. Maybe even a parking sticker.

Also, don't ever get into an accident. I think a range depending on your risk profile makes more sense. Low end would be $3178 high end might be double that.

Do you drink/smoke weed/sleepy as hell and drive ever? Owning a car puts you at a higher risk for paying much more for making poor driving mistakes whereas a comparable situation wouldn't hold you personally liable for the same mistakes if it happen in a ride-sharing car.

On top of all this, you run your car into the ground and regularly buy a new one?

You've grossly underestimated the cost of owning a car to a frustrating degree. Owning a car blows if you live in a city.

You will spend longer waiting on uber/lyft to show up than you will fueling once a week and getting an oil change every 3k miles. A full set of tires takes under (1)30 minutes.

Arkansas does not run any emissions checks outside of 2 counties. However when I lived in texas they did. The cost was state limited to $5/year. Falls under the category of maintenance.

As for accidents I have 2 on record. one at fault and one not. I am not running the cheapest insurance but I am insuring a 90s/2000s car. It is much less than full coverage on a newer one. If I had a new car that I could not afford to eat the replacement costs I would definitely run full coverage but as it sits it is better not to.

I do not drink or smoke. Driving sleepy something I rarely do although it happens sometimes. However if I nod at all Ill pull over and park it. Not worth the risk. As for drinking uber and lyft is by far better. I was never trying to argue against them when needed. But for an only vehicle it seems to be higher costs.

I do treat my cars as disposable. When a transmission goes out and I can get a better car all around for less than a transmission rebuild would cost I don't waste the money fixing what I already have. I usually get a new (to me) car ever 2-4 years. I put yearly in my calculations because buying a nicer $3000 car every 3 years averages out to the same cost.

If anything I over estimated the cost out here although I do admit that the big cost other keep mentioning is parking and nobody around here charges for parking outside of meters downtown. and those are 10c/12 minutes. But if you live were those are an issue the cost would be more.

(1)A bit off topic but it can vary widely. I have taken a single tire to walmart for work several times. Took up to 3 hours to get done and never under 1 hour. However we have had a Discount Tire (The actual name. The service is not discount) open up here recently and I have had 2 vehicles in and out. car one was 2 tires in 15 minutes and 3 (spare) in 20 minutes. Car two was a set of 4 in 22 minutes. At this point I would recommend my local one to just about anybody. It greatly suprised me how good the service could be.

You don't necessarily need to buy a junker to have an inexpensive car.

You can lease a Fiat 500e for $90/month in California (which is what I do).

That has the added benefit of removing fuel costs too.

Your lease includes fuel?

edit: Nevermind, the "e" in Fiat 500e stands for electric.

OK, but can you charge for free?

If you can charge at work then yes, but even if you charge at home it's extremely inexpensive to be almost free.

I think I worked it out once to around three cents a mile and I drive around eight to ten miles a day.

Just out of curiosity, what's the yearly milage limit on that lease?

10,000 miles - it was also $4000 down, but you get $2500 back from the California EV incentive program so it comes to $1500 down and $90/month for a three year lease.

You can get lucky and find deals where the money down is even lower. I missed one where it was $1500 down so CA was basically paying you $1000 to take the car (or if you factor in the monthly fee cost around $60 a month).

Part of the reason for this is that it's a compliance car. I think the way it works is CA requires the MPG of your fleet to meet some very high standard. In order to meet this manufacturers that want to sell in the state make an EV with a very high MPGe that helps the average. Then they have to sell a certain number of them (it can't exist in name only). You can end up getting lucky.

[Edit] Looks like my understanding of the compliance car bit was wrong, seems to be just a hard requirement to sell some amount of zero emissions vehicles: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-compliance-car-85648

That won't be enough for most people - the average mileage driven per year for a male between 20 and 34 is almost $18,000.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

I would guess it's enough when comparing to the people that are dropping car ownership for lyft or uber (especially considering that lyft and uber would be very expensive at those mileages).

While I don't disagree with you the context for this was "spending little on a car without driving a junker."

Uh... how? That seems improbably cheap.

They're inexpensive, you can usually just go to a dealer: http://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/smartphone-or-fiat-50...

FCA and other manufacturers sell or lease such vehicles at a loss purely to comply with arbitrary government requirements for zero emissions vehicles. So it isn't a sustainable situation, but in the short term there are great deals available to buyers in a few states.

So you're using your own time to repair these cars to keep the cost down, which is totally fine, but I think it's unfair to not count some of that time as a "cost" of owning the car in your model. Also, do you not have to pay for parking anywhere? What about time spent finding parking (again, may not be an issue, but it certainly would be time-consuming and expensive where I live and work).

I think the $1000/yr for maintenance cited is way more than enough to cover it.

It might not be "I went from driving everywhere to Lyfting everywhere". It could be "I went from driving everywhere to mixing Lyft+bus". Or "I went from driving+bus everywhere" to Lyft+bus everywhere".

There are probably plenty of people who would be down to take the bus (or bike) to/from work, but keep a car around for a couple longer trips a week, or for inclement weather.

AAA found average car ownership cost was over $8000/year[0]. This is pushed up by people who buy cars new, so you can certainly be lower, but that's apparently the average.

We've been talking about this a fair bit at my mostly-college student house lately. I think a number people in the house would get rid of their car if they had to pay just for their own insurance--it would certainly be cheaper for a good number of them based on their current usage. But their parents pay, so we end up with an overflowing driveway.

[0] http://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs/

Those numbers are going to be very different for different people depending on their situation, especially if they live in a dense metropolitan area. When I owned a car parking costs alone justified a move to Uber/Lyft.

I now use commuter dollars and Uber Pool for daily commute (~$5 each way before tax savings).

Plus most people rely on a combination of Uber/Lyft, public transit, bike shares, car rentals etc. rather than a single option.

Why don't people in cities lobby to put restrictions on parking fees?

I don't think people are typically making a spreadsheet and plotting out whether or not this is really cheaper or more expensive. What's happening is either:

a) They don't have a car (or a second car) currently, they spend $X/mo on Uber, and they don't think that they could get a car they'd want to drive and/or park and/or deal with for that same amount of money.

OR

b) They know that they have a car sitting in their driveway / street / etc. and they're currently spending $X per month on it to mostly sit there idle, and they're pretty sure that they'd save money not using it, so they try a month of just Uber and sure enough, it cost them less than the idling car (or they just liked it better, whatever).

People think a lot about yuppies in the city as the Uber crowd, but in my experience Uber / Lyft is far more impactful on families. Instead of needing 1 car per adult to function, you may need only 1 car per household, or maybe 2 cars for a family with kids in high school (as compared to what we used to call the "used car lot" in front of all the High School kids houses back when I was growing up in the burbs).

Living in cities changes the equation.

My insurance (younger driver, no history) was about $250/mo ($3k/year), car payments (again, young with no capital & no credit history) were $300/mo ($3600/year) for a modest Hyundai.

Average cost for private NYC parking is $430/mo(!) or probably about half that in rent premium if you rent a (very rare) building with parking, but realistically you're parking on the street - a solid 30-45 minutes of looking for a space every time you drive and remembering to move the car when the alternate side parking rules are in effect. If you drive to work, you'll either need to work somewhere with parking, or pay for a space at the destination too - doubling parking costs.

So that's up to $13k/yr to have a car in NYC, or $35/day. I could ride Uber/Lyft to work and back every day for the equivalent cost.

However, most of the time I take the subway which is $116/mo (can pay out of my pre-tax payroll too so real cost is about $80) - my car would be dormant for all but a couple of trips a week & it'd just be a pain to have to move it around for parking. I have a car2go membership that I use once or twice a month (costs about $50, or $0 if I don't use it) and I use Lyft maybe a half-dozen times a week. Once or twice a year I rent a car for further drives ($150 to rent an SUV to move some furniture, or $400 to rent a Tesla from Turo for a weekend trip upstate)

Far cheaper and more convenient to use ride sharing and public transport than to own a car here in NY. I have zero desire to go back to car ownership.

I'm sure. NYC (the densest parts anyway) is pretty much the canonical example of a place where it doesn't make sense to own a car. Many people still do but, as you say, the costs are high, transit is pretty good, taxis were ubiquitous even before Uber, and [Urgg EDIT: few] people are heading out of the city every weekend by car.

I also derive tremendous personal value from getting the opportunity to meet the people driving the cars.

Hearing different perspectives, sharing interesting stories, and generally engaging in real human interaction are something I don't get enough of in my regular life, and Lyft has materially changed that. Of course unfortunate that I don't get enough of that outside of a transactional transportation arrangement, but it's real for me.

I really appreciate you mentioning this. I occasionally drive for Lyft just to meet new people.

Overnight parking in San Francisco, for most people renting: ~$200 a month (last time I checked was closer to $250, so who knows what's up to now.)

Daily parking in San Francisco (if, say, you have to park at work): ~$20 a day, although you might get some tax benefits on this.

Annoyance of finding a parking spot anywhere in San Francisco at any of the times you might want to use the car to meet friends (lunch, dinner, weekends): very, very high. Annoyance of not being able to drink more than one drink: varies by person.

So, YMMV. If you live and work in a heavily car-based city (say Minneapolis) then using Lyft or Uber won't make much sense. If you live in a metropolis with decent public or company provided transportation for commuting, then it's cheaper to use Lyft for going out and getting the occasional ZipCar or Thrifty whenever you travel for the weekend.

Not everyone has beater cars that they work on themselves and park for free. Where I live it's $300 or more a month to park which would be more than your whole annual cost even if you get free parking at either home or work.

I can't park for much less than $20 in downtown Washington, DC. Now, if I had to drive, I could get monthly parking, but that seems to run $250/month on up. Maybe an employer would subsidize that, maybe not.

You're taking an upper-end Lyft case vs a remarkably low-end ownership case ... and ending up with actually fairly close numbers. Replace some of the chauffeured trips with cheaper paths (bike, hoverboard, bus, telecommute), and use more normal/realistic car costs (purchase around $20,000 over less than 10 years). Result will be much closer numbers; throw in issues like urban parking (very expensive) or higher fuel costs, and suddenly Lyft/Uber become much preferable.

This is exactly what I thought. Of course one can purchase a beater car for a small amount of money, but the cheapest car I ever bought was $3000 and I recall spending $500-1000 a year on 1-2 breakdowns a year. The inconvenience of the breakdowns was actually worse for me than the cost of repairs, as (at that time and living in that place) I couldn't get to work when the car was broken down, so I lost income in addition to losing cash for maintenance.

I think it depends on your parking circumstances too. I know that in the city I live in, the average monthly parking is $250 (probably higher near where I work)

Additionally, many apartments and condos in the city charge $100 per month to have a parking spot.

Right there you're increasing your car ownership costs by $4200/year.

Also, the model of buying burner cars is fine in certain circumstances, but many people aren't willing to deal with that additional overhead in car ownership.

Because of uninsured/underinsured drivers in my city insurance is one of the highest in the country. $250/mo is the avg quote I got. That's down from $280/mo after the first year because I haven't had insurance for years.

The only cars I see in that 500-1k range have basically been worn to pieces, smell of cigarettes, smell of mildew, or the suspension is completely bottomed out.

$1,000 purchase for a car? Is it just a deposit or full price for the car? I think it would be more comparable doing these calculations with some sort of median car, so medium sized sedan, 5-8 years old. Surely it would cost at least 10k to buy an average car like that?

I don't think it's fair to make these comparisons using these super cheap cars as presumably better car gives you more comfort and smoother / quieter / more comfy ride experience. Average Lyft/Uber car would cost way more than $1,000 to purchase.

On the other hand, the correct way of making this comparison would be to compare x years of Uber/Lyft usage vs X years of car ownership and I think 10-20k cars that you own would come out ahead in a 5 year comparison, for example (reasonable period of time, most people don't buy new cars more often than every 5+ years).

What city do you live in? Do you pay for parking?

I'm stunned you believe driving an underinsured $1,000 junker and spending time and energy to maintain it is comparable to Lyfting full time.

Surely you recognize your tolerances here are an edge case.

If you're a young male then insurance alone can approach $300 a month in some areas.

You're also omitting parking, which is a very significant cost in some areas. $150+ a month.

Sure, the numbers don't work for you but surely you can understand not everyone is identical to you.

Your insurance number is pretty low. Also I'd say most people don't buy $1000 cars.

He said per year.

If you buy a 10,000$ car every 10 years that's 1,000$/year. Also, if you don't drive much you can average less than 1,000$/year in depreciation without driving a junker.

Yah. I usually get 2-4 years out of a car but I figured I would offset the fact that I run real cheap cars by adding it in yearly.

I would imagine most people ditching their cars rely on some combination of transit options.

You can’t compare buying $1000 cars and spending your own time repairing them to getting picked up in an Uber which is a much more modern, comfortable, and safe car, and not having to care if it breaks down (as long as it’s not during a trip!)