Lyft is actually a little cheaper isn't it? So how does that affect the calculation?
A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
71–80 of 115 posts
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#72None of this is relevant if you have a child or dog. I know that Uber are starting to make provisions for children but there's a long way to go. But try getting a 140lb dog to the vet without your own car...
Why do people insist on bringing up things like this that are totally irrelevant to the common case? Only half of American households own dogs and 140lbs is a 99.9th-percentile dog body weight so this little issue of yours is relevant to at most one of every 2000 households.
You also can't haul an alpaca in uber, since we're enumerating corner cases.
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#73The article disregards the fact that a car has features that Uber doesn't. One is mobile storage: you can store things in your car that you often need wherever you go. This is particularly important for parents of young children. Another one is instant availability for open-ended road trips. It's not feasible to go visit a friend two hours away with the possibility of staying overnight with an Uber. If you're going t…
Another benefit to driving your own car is that you can take your client to lunch without asking her to drive.
Well, I'd imagine your average client won't object to being taken to lunch in an Uber Black, so this oughtn't be too big an issue.
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#74This is great work! Most comments here are always going to go negative on the data he collects. "This is not true! I own a 1981 VW diesel with 220,000 miles on it and the only thing I've had to fix...." Avoiding those ratholes for a moment I want to look at the other side. The Uber economics. Uber's pricing is based on the assumption that you're not using Uber as your full time car replacement. Put another way, I'm w…
>This is great work! Most comments here are always going to go negative on the data he collects
That's because the "data" is crap. He's picked numbers to get an unreasonably high idea of the cost of owning a car, then used rosy assumptions to show that Uber is cheaper.
Change the input and you change the conclusions, so I'm not going to give the guy a pat on the head just for effort.
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#75None of this is relevant if you have a child or dog. I know that Uber are starting to make provisions for children but there's a long way to go. But try getting a 140lb dog to the vet without your own car...
Why do people insist on bringing up things like this that are totally irrelevant to the common case? Only half of American households own dogs and 140lbs is a 99.9th-percentile dog body weight so this little issue of yours is relevant to at most one of every 2000 households. You also can't haul an alpaca in uber, since we're enumerating corner cases.
Hahahaha, true I have a ridiculous dog, but the classic family pet (I'm thinking lab, retriever, pit, etc.) is easily in the 40-90 lb range. I have no idea what taxi or Uber policies are for this situation, I know that they turn a blind eye to dogs small enough to be held on your lap. To literally replace the family car all these cases need to be covered, not just the convenient single urbanite cases
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#76Having done these calculations a while back, I was seriously thrown off by this claim: > However, Americans who drive less than 9,481 miles in a year should seriously consider ditching their car, because UberX will be cheaper. Well, maybe. I drive 5k miles a year and determined that it would be more expensive to shift to either UberX or Zipcar. Let's see what is up with the math: > Costs of ownership The largest erro…
The only way i can see the average American paying $1300 per year or $100/month is if they are including the added cost of have a parking space at home. Remember, $1300 is the average. Most Americans pay nothing for parking except for a few $10-20 parking fees when going to a big city.
I'm guessing the assumption is that if you rent a place for $1500 per month and it has a parking space, $100 of that is the cost of the parking space. Technically correct, but an odd way to look at it.
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#77None of this is relevant if you have a child or dog. I know that Uber are starting to make provisions for children but there's a long way to go. But try getting a 140lb dog to the vet without your own car...
Uber leaves whether to allow pets up to the individual driver[0], and suggests calling the driver after ordering the ride. I imagine if you ordered an SUV (uberXL), it would very likely be fine.
[0]https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201955127-Can-I-r...
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people insist on bringing up things like this that are totally irrelevant to the common case? Only half of American households own dogs and 140lbs is a 99.9th-percentile dog body weight so this little issue of yours is relevant to at most one of every 2000 households. You also can't haul an alpaca in uber, since we're enumerating corner cases.
Hahahaha, true I have a ridiculous dog, but the classic family pet (I'm thinking lab, retriever, pit, etc.) is easily in the 40-90 lb range. I have no idea what taxi or Uber policies are for this situation, I know that they turn a blind eye to dogs small enough to be held on your lap. To literally replace the family car all these cases need to be covered, not just the convenient single urbanite cases
To make a huge positive benefit in our transportation system and built environment we need only take 10% of cars off the road, so I think they won't come to take away your family car just yet. Certainly there are many excellent reasons to own one. But on the other hand the impossibility of car-free and car-light lifestyles are overstated.
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#79I lived in LA for a year and don't even have a license. I bought a road bike and cycled to and from work, though if drinking was (frequently) involved I'd throw my bike in the back of a cab. Assuming the average fare was around $60, and I used a cab five times per week, that was $300/week. I was considering buying a motorbike to evade this rising fee when our company was bought by HTC, the company reshuffled, by job disappeared, and I was suddenly placed in to a US visa expiry grace period where I had 10 days to get out of the country or face being an illegal immigrant (despite many people wanting to employ me, I had to leave and return to comply with their visa rules). I opted out (once bitten, twice shy re: visas), and was very glad that I only had to sell my road bike at a loss... rather than a car.
Re: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles
#80Geez, $12,744 per year ? I've had my current car since 2002, which I bought new for about $14,000 (including interest, which was low because I paid the car off as quickly as I possibly could, short circuiting most of the interest payments). I go through the exercise of the total lifetime cost of my car, gas, insurance, maintenace, all told every year or two. And it's somewhere around $.30-.40 per mile or about $1 che…
I looked into the AAA's "depreciation" and "interest" numbers, and it turns out the calculations are based on buying a car brand new with borrowed money, paying it off over the course of five years (at what must be a rather large interest rate given the average $900+ cost), and then selling it off the moment you're done paying it off. So let's just say that we're comparing to a really dumb and expensive mode of car o…
Not to mention the fact that a few times (at least) per year, people are likely to use their cars for much more than just a local public transport replacement, but will want to drive across the country with the car loaded to the hilt with holiday gear of some description.