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Comment by alistproducer2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, how could Uber have been cheaper than driving your own vehicle?

UberPool got me to Capital Factory for ~$4.50 1-way; $4.50 * 2 trips per day * 20 business days => ~$180/month. I could spend roughly that much on any one of parking, maintenance, depreciation, gas, or insurance.

edit: I use the time to clear out email, so it has a not-insignificant time benefit as well, but it's still a win on the raw numbers.

Do you go anywhere else except to work? What about groceries? Doctor's appointments? School stuff? Etc...

It's hard to imagine that you never leave the house except for work.

Instacart handles groceries for about $100 a year. Drizzly picks up alcohol if we're throwing a party or get-together. Amazon Prime handles almost everything else. Some months are more expensive because of doctor's appointments or an unexpected trip to the Apple Genius Bar and the like, but it's always still a win. I'll get a ZipCar for about $40 if we want to take the whole day and travel about here and there.

When we go out in the evenings, I usually order a beer or a cocktail with dinner, so I'd rather not drive; and parking in Austin during the weekend hours can easily be more expensive than the Uber rides. We categorize that under our Entertainment budget because we'd still take Uber for nights out even if we owned a car, but even if I recategorized it as transportation it wouldn't affect the results of the equation.

A large part of my lifestyle is subsidized by investors trying to capture a global market (Uber, Instacart, to some extent Amazon), and I recognize that this may not last forever, but I'm happy to game the system while I can.

Curious (and somewhat OT), do you actually feel intoxicated after a single beer over dinner?

I'm 120 pounds sopping wet, so regardless of my own opinions on my intoxication level, one standard American pint is enough to cause potential legal issues I am very happy to pay Uber to avoid entirely.

http://www.brad21.org/bac_charts.html

You'd be at around 0.015 over an hour, no chance of legal issues in TX.

I was in the 2016 LA Dodger's accelerator and spent the better part of 3 months without a car in LA / Marina Del Rey last fall - used Lyft and Uber daily.

- Grocery (once a week, group buying). We initially walked the 20 minutes (exercise?) but was $5 lyft / uber away.

- Gym, Beach, Marina, often independent, used Uber Pools, occassionally ran the distance.

- Office, we'd carpool and was about $10/day in commuting cost.

- Getting to specific game day bars, beaches was probably the most expensive (and most traffic) that we encountered, typically $10-$30 each way.

- Getting downtown or to Sunset was $10/way one night thanks to Lyft. Pools / Lines were often cheap like this.

Lyft weekday promotions helped a bunch. I was very surprised at the end of the program when I realized that other than the commutes to work (otherwise expensed), my regular trips to the beach, downtown la, and Sunset, I spent < $200 on all trips.

* Used a Zipcar one day to go to Ronald Reagan Museum * Rented a car one weekend to go rock climbing.

Have you ever taken your SO out to dinner? Driven somewhere just for the fun of it? Bought groceries? There is absolutely no way that Uber is cheaper than owning a car in Austin, and I spent $3000 last year on uber/lyft.

To prove: Uber cannot be cheaper than driving your own vehicle.

Proof of negation of the TP using counterexample:

1. Monthly insurance cost for own vehicle = a few hundred dollars = $k. Monthly insurance cost for Uber = $0.

2. Assume an extreme case where you don't travel at all in the entire month. Total cost of transportation for owning a car = $k. Total cost of transportation for Uber-ing everywhere = $0.

3. Assuming that the costs are proportional to the kms you have traveled you get this: http://imgur.com/A61dXx9

The inflection point where Uber is no longer cheaper than driving is (k / (mu - mc)), where mu and mc are the slopes for the lines for Uber and own car, and "k" is the insurance intercept.

If you are not commuting daily.

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