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Comment by gregkerzhner | Hacker News Reader

If the driver drove 600 miles and his car got 25 miles to the gallon, at $3 a gallon his gas expenses would have only been $72. Of course there are other costs (maintenance, depreciation), but those also exists if you are just driving your car around town, and I think Uber / Lift's whole business model is based on the driver not really taking them into account. If the tip was $100, the driver would have walked away with $330 in cash after the drive - which is not bad for a 10 hour workday.

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$0.58 per mile is the standard IRS deduction for business use of a car, meant to fully encompass gas, maintenance, etc., which would suggest a total expected cost of about $348 if you include more than just gas.

Even worse, that deduction is very conservative. Like, 1990 Ford Escort conservative. AFAIK, the business use deduction is almost always more if you list all your expenses on a percent-business basis compared to taking the $.58/mile.

It would but it isn't a great suggestion. If you're trying to optimize costs you can beat that by a huge factor.

$0.58 per mile is about how much it costs to lease a car at $350/month and pay for gas, which is what you would do in an upper middle class job requiring lots of travel.

So if you get a new, fairly nice car every three years and use it exclusively for Lyft, you won't make any money.

If you want to make more money than zero, own your car for longer and do some of the maintenance yourself.

>So if you get a new, fairly nice car every three years and use it exclusively for Lyft, you won't make any money.

Doesn't Lyft require you to drive a fairly new, fairly nice car?

Plus it ends up making it really easy on the driver. Only one passenger to worry about vs driving around the city all day. All the longer Lyfts I've taken, the drivers seem to like them the most. I always feel bad too knowing they'd have to potentially drive back without a fare but I've never had one complain about it.

Also, as the author quotes the driver saying, "I like long trips. This could be fun.".

It's a fun story to tell, probably refreshingly different from a usual day, and it seems like he at least made a decent wage, if not as much as usual. So at worst it's a small one-day paycut for a nice memorable day.

A Lyft specific thing to take into account is that Lyft drivers get a bonus if they hit a certain number of rides per week. One long ride makes it harder to hit that goal.

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