I have long been suspecious that being an Uber driver makes sense if you can do it as an extra job and only do it on friday and saturday nights and in crappy weather.
You are putting the same wear on the car, but the prices are much higher.
Uber does have partnership programs where drivers can rent a vehicle with maintenance and insurance included. So the driver basically only pays for fuel. I don't know how that works out in terms of hourly wages.
"$264 per week plus taxes, fees, gas, and other additional charges"
Or, a little less than $14,000/year before fuel costs. I do wonder how much extra those taxes, fees, and "additional charges" add up to though.
Re:End of the Line for Uber
by supernovae on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:21AM
(#28198433)
If I was the CEO, instead of thinking i could pull off self-driving cars, I would have gone with some lease/buy/discount program with Tesla and Model 3s - incentivizing an electric fleet as much as possible.
I would have boosted the charging station capacity or invested in quick charger convenience areas.
I would have also invested in partnering quick quickbooks, to have accounting/expense tracking built in or stupid easy.
depreciating assets are normal, but leaving the world to fend for themselves on how to write that expense off was their big problem IMHO
They did have a lease/buy program. It was demonstrably worse than just leasing a vehicle directly (Uber would take a cut) and there were ugly questions around what happened if you stopped driving for Uber.
As the article suggests, the CEO never actually thought they could pull off self-driving cars. That was part of the shell game that is Uber.
Re:End of the Line for Uber
by mandelbrotwurst on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:19AM
(#28199110)
Uber does have partnerships through which they offer expense tracking apps to their drivers.
If you do the math on the fully loaded cost to purchase, insure, maintain, fuel and park a late model sedan in a major city, relative to how quickly taxi-like usage wears out a car, the Uber drivers are often working for barely above minimum wage.
Their business model (and that of Lyft) relies upon there being a large pool of people who for whatever reason own a rapidly depreciating $25-30,000 asset such as a Toyota Camry, and will consume its lifespan/wear it out to make what looks like a decent hourly wage. But it's not.