Is it pretty much accepted that Uber is outright lying here? Does anyone believe there is a driver out there banking $100,000 driving a taxi?
I know the company is shady but hoping they can generate enough new blood to compensate for burnout of drivers chasing the dream seems abusive.
Maintenance, repairs, insurance, and gas are all direct costs that don't really improve with economies of scale. Car payments too - though white collar workers may also be hit with that, but probably less so.
I think there's a bit of deliberate obfuscation here where Uber wants you, the office worker, to think of that $90K without all the strings attached, in which case it would be a pretty decent income.
There are probably middle-men in the Uber industry just as there are middle-men in the taxi industry, who own a car and pay people to drive it with Uber. If they have one account per car, the account could me making $100k / year via driving 24/7, and Uber could be choosing to believe that these accounts represent a single self-employed driver.
Or else the "Data Driven" company doesn't know what the difference between Median and Maximum are?
On another note, I've met quite a few UberX drivers who have financed their cars. That level of fixed costs make someone significantly less able to absorb any price cuts.
Finally, what is the really Price Elasticity of Demand here? Even when the fares are at surge levels of 2x, how does often does that deter people? Sure, if its 8 blocks, I might walk it, but at a certain threshold (which I assume is the best revenue anyway) the only other alternative is some other mode of service with an almost equally high cost. My guess is that their claim that lower fares = greater ridership has a much lower coefficient than they let on.