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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comparing the costs of Uber against ownership costs of 2 cars for 1 person? Why not buy a third car and make your savings look even better?

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Not only that, but 2 cars over 2 years; and, measuring depreciation as a cost. Also, comparing the maintenance cost of owning a BMW to riding in an uberpool. I don't know about your locality, but most of my rideshare vehicles are budget sedans or hatchbacks, or hybrids -- much cheaper than 11k a year in maintenance.

Would he have stuck with 2 cars for 10 years, or 2 cars for a year each? 10 years of uber vs 2 cars over 10 years will definitely shift the savings number in favor of car ownership compared to 2 years.

He's counting depreciation of an M3 in there, too... why not buy a fighter jet and make the savings look even better?

He didn't give up his cars until uber pool, so for a great deal of the data he is using uber in addition to his regular car, which limits his uber expenses.

Because the largest portion of his savings comes from the shift to uber pool, this is completely invalid for anyone except a single adult. Anyone with a spouse or children, or anyone doing even average shopping, anyone not in a major downtown, will not be seeing these savings.

He's only traveling around town, and seemingly only using Uber less than once per day, even during his peak usage. Is he using public transportation? Google transportation? Friends? I don't see how one can get to and from work, and run errands, and go out in the evenings or on weekends, and average 200 rides per year (again, during his optimum savings period). Is he working from home most of the time?

He mentions renting cars for longer trips, but this is not included in his costs. In addition, his uber trips are all in SF... like, yeah, if you only travel within a major US city, transportation costs can be pretty low (and why not just use public transportation?).

All of this implies to me that, not only are his calculations wildly off, not only are his uber costs under-reported, but even with all that, the entire, incredibly ideal, situation is reproducible only by a very small minority of the population. Alternatively, the other interpretation is that he was wildly overpaying and under-utilizing his cars before.

Here is a more realistic calculation for a US resident: 30k car, 10 years 10k gas, 5k insurance, 7k repairs = ~5k per year.

vs.

4 trips per day, on average, for 1-2 persons @ $20 per trip = $29k per year. And that's being generous--I'm pretty sure my spouse and child and I would blow through at least $50k a year if we switched entirely to Uber, and we have a very typical travel pattern for the US.

He does use public transportation, but only makes a one word mention of it:

"My rides increased a lot in June 2016, when I sold both my cars. I’m solely reliant on Uber (and buses) to get around town in San Francisco."

Ah. So basically he is not saving money now, he was just wasting it before.

I had the same reaction, although to be fair I think he's still saving money if you only figure the costs of the Jeep.

> Incidentals on the vehicles cost $3,450 per year: $1,000 maintenance, $500 insurance, $1,500 gas (just above the national average of $1,400), $300 car washes (so shiny), $150 registration, and $0 parking.

Let's say 50% of the maintenance and the insurance was the Jeep (probably not, since the BMW should be more expensive to insure), and 100% of the gas costs would go to a single car (balances out the other way, since the BMW probably had better milage). 50% of registration. Stop getting your car washed. Total:

$2,325/yearly for just the Jeep. So on average he's still saving a little bit of money on the Uber. On the other hand, if you just compare the last three years he'd be better off with just the Jeep. The average is very skewed by 2011 and 2012, when he didn't Uber much.

He doesn't assign any cost to wait time; I'd be interested to find out how much time he's spent waiting for his Ubers to show up. I bet Uber doesn't give you that information on your account but I don't have an Uber account to check.

Interesting analysis effort anyhow! I'm critiquing but I like the general idea and I'm glad he published this.

Don't forget to include the time waiting for Uber to show up. That's the real cost of taking a cab IMO.

What you lose in terms of waiting for the car to show up, you gain back in not having to park and getting delivered as close to your destination as possible and not having to walk from the parking spot.

This wildly depends on where you are. Your parking savings will be much higher in SF than in suburban Dallas, where "time for parking" was a foreign concept to me growing up for anything except sports games and big concerts.

There are definitely people who are better off not owning a full-time car, but I agree with the poster above who find it a bit disingenuous to compare to a $80,000 M3. You could definitely find a car that would cost you under 12K for six years -- especially if you already have a car that's all-or-almost paid off.

The factor on the other side of the fence is that though comfort, etc, is usually lower in the back seat of a Lyft than in the driver's seat of your own personal car, you're not having to do the work of driving. If you want to save money, this is labor that'll be worth it to you driving your own cheap car. But if you want to save effort/stress/etc, it's worth spending to not drive yourself, especially in high-traffic areas.

I didn't! Second to last paragraph.

OK, let's make up some numbers...

267 rides last year. Assume, I dunno, average 5 minute wait? So 22.25 hours of waiting; half a week. Huh, that's actually pretty significant given the author is probably making pretty good money in his role.

Yes, and one of them is a BMW that was only three years old at the start of his data collection.

And don't forget this bit - "By comparison, car ownership cost $11,783 per year, most of it depreciation." He's including what is basically an accounting measurement, not an actual out-of-pocket cost!

I wonder what his "savings" would look like if he used only 1 car for himself and didn't get to write off $500+ a month in depreciation.

Hi, Neal here, author of this analysis. You are right, it was an accounting measurement, until I sold the car, then it became a real pocket expense because I sold the car for less than I bought it for, and in that moment it was a measurable cost. I sold the cars before doing this analysis, and included the sales price in the analysis.

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