Hacker News Reader

Stupid question: but how is this the case? The fare I pay for an Uber or Lyft seems much higher than the time/car/insurance cost of driving myself ($30-$50 for a 25 min ride to SFO). But the drivers don’t get much of that fare, so I assumed the bulk of the money went to Uber/Lyft. But they’re badly in the red... so where is the money going? I’m missing something here.

View on HN

> But the drivers don’t get much of that fare, so I assumed the bulk of the money went to Uber/Lyft.

Ridestar claims that 61% goes to the driver; 39% to Lyft/Uber.[0]

Their S-1[1] shows lots of sales and marketing, lots of R&D (remember, they're working on self-driving cars, among other things), and lots of general/admin (I suspect they spend a lot on legal).

[0] https://www.ridester.com/uber-fees/

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000119312519...

Besides the R&D, they hired an army of SV software engineers at top-of-market rate.

The drivers do get most of the fare--but, properly accounting for costs, a lot of that slice "goes to" their cost of operating the car for the ride.

drivers get a little more than just half of the fare, uber keeps more than 1/3

Reply on news.ycombinator.com