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Semantics. Cars don’t cost that much to operate. Uber doesn’t cost that much. The portion going to the human take home pay minus car value depreciation and other expenses is small, but a substantial chunk of it.

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Cars cost a huge amount of money upfront and require a tremendous amount of maintenance to operate, and that's before we get into insurance and accidents.

Right now, all of these are fully on the drivers. This will turn around if Uber rolls self-driving cars worldwide.

Having looked into the finances of car share companies I can vouch that the fleet costs are just huge blots of red ink on their finances

Uber wouldn't work if they owned the fleet - it's a huge advantage to just be the app + ops + acquisition costs

Right, eventually the drivers will figure out that they are the losers in this scheme. People really don't understand just how much it costs to own a car, especially one you drive 30k miles a year.

Taxi cab companies are incredibly corrupt as they are run like your local cable TV service! With all the customer satisfaction and low prices and quality service that that entails! I believe that Lyft and Uber can easily beat the corruption of the taxi cab market and still provide rides at a good price and profitably.

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