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Comment by rat9988 | Hacker News Reader

If uber drivers make enough to make their cars a worthwile investment, then I'd assume a fleet of driverless cars are profitable.

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Do Uber drivers make enough to cover complete vehicle costs? I remember reading that after total costs of ownership (depreciation, insurance, gas, maintenance, etc) Uber drivers really aren't making much.

As of 2018 it was something like $8.55 an hour median in the US accounting for costs of upkeep.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/01/uber-lyft...

There are so many ways to slice and dice those numbers. Drivers who already own a car they aren't going to get rid of would be paying a lot of those costs anyway (other than wear & tear and fuel). Taxes are all over the place; some pay 30%+, others nothing.

What it really comes down to is the ratio of cost of living for the driver to the amount they take home after buying gas. If I'm almost broke, want to buy more stuff than I can afford, and know I can get $100 worth of rides for $20 worth of gas in less than 2 days, the decision has already been made. As long as I have close to the same buying power, this will remain true.

It's a delicate balance, though, and when you're competing against people in more dire straits who maybe aren't as good at math, at a certain point it could become unviable.

The drivers may not make enough money:

https://www.ridester.com/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make/#2

As a general rule, drivers should devote 20% of their earnings to insurance, maintenance, gas, and repairs. When this is accounted for, the average Uber driver earnings are barely above the poverty line.

Right, but with an AI driver all of those earnings that put a human slightly above the poverty line go into Uber's pocket.

That's only if maintenance costs are the same (I'm assuming they won't be). I assume there will be much higher vandalism costs and some other costs that are new to owning a car.

The best way to think about Uber is a reverse loan on your car. If you need money in a pinch that's a way you get it but it's not a way to actually make any sort of decent living.

Uber drivers use their cars for stuff other than Uber. It's a way to make additional money from something you already have. That would not be the case if Uber had its own fleet.

Why couldn't the same logic work in the post-self-driving future?

If I own a self-driving car that sits in my garage from 8 PM to 8 AM, why not just put it on the Uber network and have it make money while I sleep?

As long as people still own cars, why does Uber ever need to own their own fleet? If anything without the actual pain-in-the-ass of actually having to be a driver, I'd think a lot more people would crowdsource their idle vehicles.

If a lot of people did that, I'd expect payments to drop to somewhere around the marginal cost of operating the vehicle which is mostly mileage-based. Or below because there's no shortage of people who need money now even if they realize they're basically borrowing money from their future self.

Who needs a ride from 8pm to 8am? Nobody except drunks. Sure you can send your car out, but you need to plan to get up early every morning to clean the puke out.

Most people follow similar schedules: they go to work at rush hour, ride with co-workers to lunch around noon and then home during the second rush hour. If you are willing to let your car out 6am to 8pm you got some possibilities - but this is when you need/want your car for your own convenience.

Well, drunks, people who work late shifts, people who are going to/from the airport/train station, etc. But definitely not as many as the rush hour crowd.

> As long as people still own cars, why does Uber ever need to own their own fleet?

Because when people without cars need cars is correlated with when people with cars are using their cars.

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