Originally Posted by tandempower

Right, but a share-system is not for profit, nor is it even a non-profit company designed to pay out revenues without declaring profit. It is a method for sharing property among multiple users so that the downtime and other waste of appliance ownership can be turned into cost-savings for users.

Why would you pay for someone else to profit from you sharing a vehicle with other users unless you have to? And if you do have to pay out some profit in order to do so, why would you want to pay more than necessary?


Well, it's really just a question of taking the monthly costs of vehicle ownership and dividing by 30 to see how much you need to make per day to break even. It you pay out $600/month, you have to make $20/day to cover your expenses. That's ten rides per day at $2/ride, assuming you just want to partake in the share system and not make profit.

Now, once you start factoring in things like who has to take the vehicle for service and repairs, fuel it, etc. things get trickier. Such things are unpaid labor that vehicle owners do for themselves without paying anyone else to do them, so they don't get factored into the cost of car ownership, but of course they are part of it.

Still, if you look at ride-share prices, they are more than necessary to cover the expenses of vehicle ownership. In fact, they are so high that drivers are treating ride-sharing like a job, and the corporate people also seem to be doing pretty well. So there is definitely room for profit, and there is room for more profit if you incorporate ride-drive sharing into the system, because then people will drive for a discount instead of expecting pay, i.e. because they are getting a ride as they drive.

So let's say a ride-share driver gives 10 rides per day at an average of $10/ride and makes $100. If that $100/day goes to the vehicle instead of its driver, that's $3000/month. If you think provide a 50% discount on rides for passengers when they drive, that amount may go down some, but then you don't have to pay a driver, and so if you're an independent contractor, that frees your time up to go do something else for money besides driving.


It just depends on how much people use ride/drive-sharing. If they use it for every trip, the same as if they were driving, then it wouldn't make the world any more car-free. If, however, they use it as part of a broader 'transportation diet' that includes transit, biking, walking, etc. then they could cut their car usage way down.

One problem with personal car ownership is that once you are paying to buy, maintain, and insure a vehicle, you can't redirect that money for other things like biking, transit, ride-sharing, or whatever. However, if you could essentially rent out your car when you're not using it, you get money back for driving less, which free up your money for other things, like biking, transit, ride-sharing, or whatever.