You forgot tires, which you burn through faster driving more. And brakes, wipers, and all other expected wear items other than oil. Also scheduled maintenance items like brake fluid, transmission/diff fluid, spark plugs, belts, cabin and engine filters, etc...
(also weird you did the math on 100k miles for cost of car, but only 75k for unexpected repairs?)
Also you can't get a new civic for 20k.
$25,599 is the price for a base model on truecar
I'm sure you can get a used one, but then maintenance and repairs will be higher, sooner.
From Honda's site, Civic starts at $20,650 USD, though I will admit that I misquoted the fuel efficiency, it's really only 30 mpg city, though that shouldn't change the numbers much, especially when I went with
$4/gal as the fuel cost. You could get an Insight for $23k and get over 50mpg!
Anyway, again, no one should be
buying a car for Uber. You have a car, you do uber to help pay the bills as a second job or as a primary job when you have limited hours/changing schedule (in school or taking care of family members, etc).
You're right that I did not factor in the cost of tires. I figure most uber drivers are probably going to places like Walmart for tires and I suspect you can find 40k or 50k tires there for maybe $115 to $135/tire, especially in the 16 inch size. But lets say you spend $1,000 on tires that last only 40k miles, that still only $0.025/mile. I suspect most brake fluid and transmission fluid lasts at least 50k miles but probably doesn't get replaced before 100k miles with most people, maybe never. Spark plugs usually last at least 50k miles and again probably in 90% of cases last 100k miles or never get replaced. Cabin and engine filters would add a small cost, probably less than $200 to replace them every two years or so, those are all very small costs when looking at operating expenses. I still think you're below the $0.58/mile number because no one is paying $4/gal for gas right now, people should NOT be buying a new car for this (if you don't already have a car, don't get into uber/lyft, you're just not going to make money), and this all assumes the car is literally no usable after 100k miles. If you can sell the car for $5,000 at the "end of life" at 100k miles, then you minus $0.05/mile off your expenses during those 100k.
I did the math based on 100k trying to pick a number that was the "end of life" for the car. A point where it might have high enough miles that it made more sense to buy a new car instead of repairing the old. However, I assumed that the old car had $0 value now. This might be true if you gave it to a child or kept it as a second car or something. But I'm sure you could get at least $1,500 to $2,000 trade value and probably $5,000 private party sale. All that actually reduces the cost per mile of it.
I did the math on an unexpected repair at 75k miles because I wanted a "worst case" cost. You're probably under warranty for the first 40 to 50k and you might have an engine/transmission warranty for 100k. However, lets assume an expensive cost happened by the time you hit 75k miles, then that was factored into the cost. You might actually not have any expensive repair during the whole 100k life of the car. Then that $1,500 budgeted toward an unexpected repair wouldn't be used and again you actually are
less expense per mile.
The bottom line is the most expensive thing is going to be fuel and insurance. The fuel is a hard expense that has no way around it. If you're working you're using fuel. However, the insurance is actually an "unfair" cost toward the expense of driving for uber. If you have a car and drive to another job, or drive for fun, or drive to the store, or any reason, then you already [should] have insurance. Yes working ride share will be more expensive, but it's not going to be $150/mo more expensive. I was taking the total cost of insurance, but you might be paying $80/mo already for personal insurance and ride share might only add $30/month. In that case you really should only calculate the cost per mile of working based off the
extra cost of insurance by saying you're a ride share.
Again, I think realistically for the average adult that has a 1 to 3 year old car in good condition and either was a stay at home parent or worked some other job (retail, store manager, etc) many of those costs you already would be paying and the ride share portion wouldn't
add that much more other than fuel. You're additional maintenance, insurance, and fuel per mile probably is down near the $0.20 to $0.25/mile range. Much of that you would be able to deduct from taxes and you might realize a savings of $0.05 to $0.07/mile which means actual out of pocket
additional cost would be like $0.15 to $0.20 a mile. Again, DO NOT start ride sharing from the ground up. Don't buy insurance and a car if you already can get by without those things.
