A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles

How about parking? In Dublin (Ireland) where I live, you're paying 50/month (600 a year) euro for parking at home, AND then paying your daily rate of 45-50 a week for city centre parking.

> Parking cost

Yeah, I can see that. And hassle. If I lived in a sufficiently dense city with good public transit, I'd get rid of my car tomorrow. In my area, you can get reserved spots for ~$250/mo. L.A. seems to run ~$100/mo to $300/mo depending on area.

> Otherwise your model is not very predictive.

No, it's perfectly predictive. I have a threshold that I will not exceed in a single repair on my car or in more than n repairs over some period of time. Once that threshold is achieved, I get rid of the car and make it the dealer's problem. I know from lots of prior experience that I can always get rid of a car for cheaper than what it would cost to fix it.

For example, I know that I will never ever pay more than $500 to repair my car. Ever. For any reason whatsoever.

I also know that once my car costs that much in repairs over 12 months, I will get rid of the car. Period. $400 over three repairs over a year? I'll keep it. $500? New car and hopefully 12 more years of almost trouble free driving.

> Lexus an Mercedes rank

Last time I checked, Mercedes had terrible reliability w/r to CR ratings. Like most German cars they have all kinds of issues with the electrical system. It's just something the Germans don't seem to have ever licked. It might have changed, but decades of not caring about the problem has made me put them in the "do not ever buy" category. Some UK sites regularly list Mercs in "least reliable" lists next to long lists of Renaults and Peugeots.

Anecdotal, all my friends who buy Mercedes cars, never buy another one because of all the time it spends getting fixed. Somehow Mercedes earned a weird reputation for reliability that I've never seen play out.

Of course, the only cars I've seen people actively work to get rid of after buying them were Land Rovers and Jaguars.

Strangely, high end Hondas (Acura in the U.S.) have much lower reliability scores than low and medium level Hondas.

Fords are getting better, but American cars are basically garbage. Lists of cars to avoid are dominated by American cars (mostly Chevys), followed closely by German cars. Mini is usually on those lists.

I've never figured out why people who buy American cars are confused by all the repair time and money they have to put into their vehicles. It's not like this isn't known and reported in virtually every car reliability survey.

"Wow my used 2006 VW Jetta diesel spends all the time in the shop? I never would have guessed something something German engineering blah blah diesels are more reliable"

You could have guessed this by actually looking up car reliability ratings.

"I can't believe that the trim and fittings started to fall off my 2005 Chevy Tahoe right before the engine required $3000 in repairs!"

You could believe it if you'd managed to crack open a used car reliability guide, any used car reliability guide, before buying it.

It could be worse, at least the American market doesn't have to contend with French cars shudder.

Here's actually decent free site built on the glassdoor principle. You share your info to get access to all the cars they have sufficient data on.

http://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability-results/06-2014

> 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.

Traditional car rental is for this usage case. Availability isn't quite instant but easy a day or so ahead. Uber doesn't need to cover this usage pattern since there's already an extensive market of supply. Sure, if you go every weekend you'd want to own your own car, but for infrequent such trips, regular car rental supplements an Uber-cetric lifestyle just fine.

The math in this article is awful. Constant cost despite varying the miles driven. Making money out of thin air. Yes you can talk about intangibles, such as the ability to do work while not driving. You can even give that a monetary value to do comparisons. But I'm not going to make more money by working while not driving, so don't add this opportunity cost to the cost of the car. Or maybe you should add up the opportunity cost of waiting for the uber car. You also can't just ignore surge pricing. Not everyone needs to own a car. But there are a lot of advantages, some that are hard to put a dollar figure on.

Jesus, I guess, but compare the space efficiency of a rush hour train in an urban area to 4 people in an electric car. Not that I would want to sit in a car with 3 strangers, or my spouse and baby with 2...