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Comment by QuixoticQuibit | Hacker News Reader

Doesn’t Uber also lease cars to drivers? I was surprised to see in the Bay Area that so many drivers had fairly new cars. I asked one about it and he said that Uber leased it out. Presumably a portion of the driver’s income goes directly towards the car.

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100 percent of their income goes to the car until its paid off for that month, and the interest rate they charge to lease the car is downright usury. $200/wk to rent a Hyundai Elantra that Hyundai leases out at under $200/mo.

The difference being that $200/wk covers everything but gas, lease a car direct from Hyundai and you have a lot more overhead to deal with -- maintenance, insurance, going over the "average miles" in a few months, &etc.

Most lease agreements now include maintenance. Why? Because they don't want you to run the car into the ground since then you'll just return it. Modern cars need oil changes at 10k miles. With a 30k lease you are talking 3 oil changes which is like $50 in wholesale cost. Brakes and tires should last the whole 30k.

Not exactly true. If you drive full-time for Lyft or Uber you MUST change the oil of your car EVERY MONTH. Leased Hyundai's don't see that kind of stress until a year goes by so the Lyft/Uber car is getting destroyed at least 4x more quickly.

Depreciation curves aren’t linear. At $20,000 which is the list price of the car (which is almost certainly overstating it) you’re depreciating the car to zero after two years. Even a beat to shit two year old car isn’t worth zero.

Uber doesn’t directly. They just find partners who do.

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