Subprime leasing programs.

Initially the lease looks very attractive, because you get a swanky new car, combined with bonuses and stuff that you get as a new driver.

Few months in, the incentive turns into a shackle. You start realizing that incentives are dwindling and the monthly payments are eating into most of your Uber earnings, which was masked by higher new driver incentives initially.

At this point, loss aversion kicks in, and forces the driver to drive crazy number of hours every day, just to make a decent profit over operating costs and the monthly due for the car.

With more such drivers in the market, and an ever dipping price for rides, $/Mile reduces.

That's the incentive.

update: If you think Uber/Lyft in the US is bad, talk to Uber/Ola drivers in India. Many of them are sleep deprived and driving, to make ends meet. And often barely earn enough to justify the costs.

Ding ding.

I've started seeing "buy here pay here" auto dealerships use "Uber-ready" as a marketing message on their most expensive cars (and subsequently most insane leasing arrangements).

It's a smart selling point, because you're overcoming peoples' general aversion to spending $$$ on luxuries for themselves by allowing them to justify the nice-car purchase as a business investment. Sure man, you really NEED that F150 to ferry drunk kids around a five block radius from Duke.

If you’re going to do this, I recommend renting weekly through the Lyft/Hertz or Uber/Enterprise route. It costs more per week, but both networks have a quota where free rent kicks in. But you’ll have to drive superhuman hours and only for the one network to hit the quota.

Its for that reason that, unless you really, really need a car, I would suggest not doing that. If you want to have any kind of a life outside of driving, then you're likely not going to make the high quotas.

Yeah, Ubers in India are ridiculously cheap.

One of the strangest experiences I had in an India Uber was the driver getting pulled over and borrowing 100₹ from me so he could pay the bribe. "If you don't do this, things will be very bad for me"

The last time I was in Las Vegas, we used Lyft to get around and the one driver we talked to quite a bit told us the car he was driving belonged to Lyft. I think that makes a lot more sense than using a car you own.

Definitely being misled, read the marketing uber puts out for drivers. Also desperation, the way uber pushes for driver sign ups reminds me of MLM schemes about "running your own company!! Setting your own hours!!!"

The few people I know who drive like it because if they have no plans on a Thursday - Sunday night or specific windows of time throughout the week they can turn on the app, drive and make some cash. This adds a lot of flexibility and it's less about the money and more about doing something productive and meeting people. I don't know anyone that career drives for a ride service though.

It's the modern day equivalent of being a longshoreman.

This is funny on like four different levels.

Not that I'm defending these companies, but do remember that many people need flexible hours that most minimum-wage employers are actively hostile to.

Being able to begin work whenever they want, and more importantly not work whenever they want. Friend calls and want's to meet at 8? Even if you have a rider you can go off the clock in ~15 minutes.

Presumably for a lot of people the thing they need to work around is not so much friends calling and wanting to meet as their primary jobs with irregular hours.

Or they have pre-existing appointments at certain times of the day (drop-off/pick-up kids at school or spouse at work if there's one car, etc). I wouldn't be so quick to assume what the flexible hours are often being used for, since it might be very different based on age group and location.

Work flexibility helps a lot of people in lots of different ways, which is why it's such a bit deal.

> Couldn't these people make more money (and not have to replace their car in five years) flipping burgers or the like?

Yeah but would you rather flip burgers and smell like french fries the whole time? Driving people around is not completely unpleasant in comparison.

My sister had the great fortune to work at Wendy's when she was a teenager, and I remember picking her up from work and her absolutely reeking of raw onions, from having to place them on all the burgers. The smell would not dissipate for hours even with intense hand washing.

"Are drivers misled into believing they will make more? Is the cost per mile intentionally hidden from them?"

They absolutely are. I know someone who ended up signing one of those rental car leases with Lyft to become a driver. The numbers the company provided made it seem like it would be quite easy to pay off each week. As it turns out, it was just like the old "company store".

Lack of other options is one, I'd guess.

When you flip burgers you have to show up at predetermined times, no matter if you're having a bad day or something inconvenient comes up, have to wear a cheesy uniform and put on a smile, tolerate whatever coworkers you get thrown in with, and of course you are about as far from your own boss as it's humanly possible to be. It's totally plausible to me that the sum of avoiding these costs is equal to five bucks per hour.

>It's totally plausible to me that the sum of avoiding these costs is equal to five bucks per hour.

It's only a choice when viewed from an ivory tower. If you have to make ends meet on fast food wages you're not gonna take a massive pay cut in exchange for slightly more autonomy.

Also, the customer interaction side of things is about the same in both jobs and in fast food you'll have to do less bending over backward for customers.