I'd say, once people stop dumping money into these companies and they can no longer operate at a loss, the real price of a ride/delivery will become clear.
They also don't have to commit to set hours.
These should have the effect of increasing the supply of drivers (not to the full extent of all ride-share drivers, of course).
They also don't have to front the capital cost of a medallion.
Ride share prices are sensitive to market demand in near real-time rather than being set by the taxi commission (in some long-term relationship to supply/demand).
Combining those effects, I can easily see ride share prices settling somewhere below taxi rates and still leaving profit for all players.
Except depreciation and other costs are pretty heavily a function of miles rather than time. (Especially outside of the snow belt where the number of winters plays a big role in salt damage.)
>They also don't have to front the capital cost of a medallion.
That's true but how many places is that a big factor?
We can argue the details and you're right that it's hard to compare dynamic pricing to long-term negotiated fixed pricing.
But I'm not really making a case for exactly where pricing/costs will end up assuming sustainable ride-share businesses. I'm just saying that taxi fares in most markets are probably a reasonable benchmark whether or not ride-share on average settles a bit higher or a bit lower.
The most ridiculous one I saw was a drive with a cracked iPhone 7 Plus three days after release. In my half hour ride I saw 4 overdraft notifications and 2 please pay your bill notifications. We talked about waiting in line to get the phone and how she regretted not paying $50 for the case. She was also interested in buying a lot of stuff.
Many of them will do something stupid like trade-in their car impulsively, or total it backing into a pole where mileage doesn't really matter.
A lot of them will use the Uber gas card to get gas and then drive for Lyft to get the cash. Then next month when they need money they forgot they owe Uber and now have to drive to pay off the gas debt to Uber before they can earn anything.
I've only met three people who were willing to admit using it as a payday loan, they were all grad students. Two had financial aid delays, one blew too much money on his girlfriend.
I've also met quite a few older people (usually men) with high incomes that were laid off and need quick cash. These are often singles living paycheck to paycheck on $200k in LA and they can never figure out what to cut.
this isn't really true of most mainstream cars. as long as people perceive the 2020 civic as an improvement over the 2019 model, a 2019 civic with zero miles will be worth less (you can verify this by visiting any dealership that still has the outgoing model in inventory). this is even more true of high-end cars until you get into stuff that's truly rare.
But if I already own a car, how long I will continue to be able to drive it is far more determined by the mileage than by how old it is within reason. This is admittedly from the perspective of someone who basically drives cars until it's no longer economically sensible to do so.
I do think that new computer tech-type features may be shifting the equation to make older vehicles less attractive more quickly. Although I'd argue those are probably more important for the driver than the passenger--modulo some safety features.
People quit when the numbers stop making sense for them, they don't always just stay in the underclass. The high cost of acquisition and incentives they did historically reflect a lot of driver churn.
They've adjusted but limo companies also used to gravitate towards the various body of frame models including other variants on the Crown Victoria. Apparently they were very attractive for high-mileage uses because of maintenance/rebuilds.