A 20 year old, fully depreciated, 13-20 MPG Crown Vic isn't going to be allowed in major cities as a taxi anyway. Uber will, however, let you use a 10-15 year old, fully depreciated Prius that gets 50+ MPG or the same age 35+ MPG Corolla that you can buy for $4000.
Still allowed here. See Crown Vics still all the time.
Uber forces ten years old or newer in most cities. They hid it behind their login wall once they realized anywhere outside of a major city they weren’t able to find enough drivers of newer cars who wanted to destroy them. The website will say 15, but “log in to find out for sure”.
Clearly they want a fleet of much more valuable vehicles than the price anyone wants to pay.
If they could actually compete with cabs, they would have. They’re just enjoying milking the tech rah-rah culture and gig economy trends.
Or in other words, just acting like normal Silicon Valley execs. LOL.
You NEED a new $1000 phone every couple of years. Don’t you feel the pressure? It’s tech! It’s new! We let our engineers bloat the OS so badly with nothing burgers that the old one will run slow.
It’s the same deal with their creeping crud of promises of what they were building and could offer when they started vs now. It’ll keep eroding. The economics of “drive me to the airport” didn’t change.
And the fuel cost or economy won’t be any big deal compared to competitors overall. It’s the skirting of taxes and regulation that they’ve gotten away with so far that gave a false sense of better economy.
Doesn’t work for airlines and doesn’t work for cars. Fleet management is a very well known business model and the accounting numbers just aren’t that complex.
Start with the promise of no tipping and owner supplied cars and then work your way back to the bottom dollar. First hit was most States requiring commercial insurance. They’ll slowly add back on the rest.