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Comment by pwinnski | Hacker News Reader

That people think vehicle wear costs are negligible is how Uber manages to convince people to drive for such low wages. People are bad at math.

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If someone is making $20/hr net income driving at night (pretty average for big cities according to this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s08BdVqCgrZWZkV0ZfZnhGUGc...), do you really think the wear costs are more than a few bucks per hour?

Usage costs for cars are usually tagged at around $0.50-$0.60 per mile [1]. Looking around, seems like the average 8 hour uber driver is putting on about 100-200 miles per shift [2].

So assuming 150 miles per 8 hours, the average uber driver is paying about $11/hr in fuel and depreciation costs.

So the net income after that would probably be more like $9/hr.

1: http://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/

2: https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-full-time-driver...

The analysis I linked above calculated the net earnings after all expenses as being ~$13/hr on average (and included all registration and insurance costs as well as the AAA figure in expenses). That would mean higher hourly earnings for part-time drivers in big cities (who often only work Friday/Saturday nights).

Hm interesting, the report suggests that 8-hour drivers are doing more like 60 miles per shift (($4.79 * 8) / 0.6).

Curious what the huge discrepancy is there (between self-reported and gathered data), though without being able to see the underlying data I guess we can't tell.

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