hm. It appears I'm off on my car prices. I thought japanese minivans were in that range, and with pool, those are really common. looking, they look closer to $30K than $40K if you don't spring for the extras. doing a survey of car manufacturer websites, my impression of how much vehicles cost appears to be around $10K high across the board. The base model honda accord is only $23K? that is way less than I thought.
I use uberx to work, and pool home most days; I've used select once. I think I get a Mercedes C-class at least once a week, some of them looking pretty new. Oddly, I almost never see BMWs. I remember the other night I got in some giant four door American pickup that looked new and very expensive, but I don't know enough about trucks to recognize the model to verify that impression.
Still, the standard Prius is gonna be like $400/month on a 60 month loan, and that's just the loan. I imagine that there would be much value in the vehicle after those 60 months, if you drove full time in it, and I imagine the Prius has lower operating costs than most vehicles in it's class.
I do occasionally get tiny economy cars... but not very often, which seems weird, as if the major cost was the car, you'd think drivers would optimize for that by buying smaller cars, but that doesn't seem to be the case.