Risk = Reward. If UBER doesn't invest in transportation powered by automated cars they risk being replaced by companies that do. General Motors and Lyft are already ready to do it if UBER doesn't. http://www.wired.com/2016/01/gm-and-lyft-are-building-a-netw...

Unlike the days of dial up where bandwidth improvements made it obsolete it's hard to see a day where we don't need reliable transportation on roads. Cars play an integral part of modern life.

The maintenance cost of these cars in the US is high. Whoever is making this deal should probably stop by the Lexus dealership before they sign any papers.

> The maintenance cost of these cars in the US is high.

You are correct, of course, but I think the majority of that would go away if you hired the mechanic yourself and bought parts direct. My theory is that most of the German luxury vehicle surcharge is the "hey, it looks like you've got money, how about you give me some of that" surcharge.

I mean, I've owned a BMW 325is and a Toyota Sienna. Similar vehicles in that the vehicles had similarly sized engines/transmissions and brakes to match.

Sure, my experience agrees with your assertion in that rolling into the mechanic in the 325is is going to cost me north of twice what rolling into the mechanic in my Toyota Sienna will cost me.

But if you are doing the work yourself? the German car isn't any harder to work on. If anything, I think the german mechanical aesthetics agree with me in ways that make working on it easier than working on a Japanese car. Sure, they need a little bit more love in that they're just not as advanced as a Japanese car, or at least not as much effort is put into maintenance free operation, so you need to do more to keep them running, but that difference isn't huge. Parts are also not hugely more expensive than similarly specc'd parts on the toyota (e.g. brake rotors cost about the same on my 325is as they did on my toyota sienna; they were similarly sized, too; it's just the 325is was a much smaller car, so stopped dramatically better.)

I mean, I'm generalizing about German luxury vehicles from my experience with another brand, but yeah, if you hire your own mechanic, I bet most of the maintenance cost differences become much smaller.

I once asked my father (a lifelong auto mechanic) why servicing high end vehicles is so expensive. Roughly from memory, don't quote me on makes/models/etc:

Most cars require special, often model specific, tools to service them. A specific adapter to take off an oil filter on your Honda Civic, or a set of special ramps that get your super low Ferrari on to the car hoist. The shop then has to amortize the cost of tools over the number of vehicles they service with it. So the special wrench used for the Civic can probably be used for 500 oil changes in a year, but the Ferrari ramps are used on maybe 10 a year. Not to mention the specific training required to do the actual service.

In a computer related example, imagine a receptionist that just needs Microsoft Paint to put text on signs around the office. Now compare that to an industrial designer that needs a $10,000 licence for a CAD application and specific training to do material stress analysis on your new iPhone accessory. Each sign has little to no incremental cost, whereas each iPhone accessory needs to pay for part of that licence and class.

If Uber were to buy thousands of the exact same vehicle, they would have a predictable amortization of a spark plug tension wrench, while a dealer might hope to get enough cars in a year to justify the cost.

I'm a mechanic and software guy. Your theory is incorrect. German parts and labor generally cost more. Mostly due to complexity. An S-Class has more on-board electronics than the average Boeing. They begin to have issues after the 2 year mark and are not cheap to fix. Even if you have your own shop and parts. The 325 you had is a simpler BWM that did not carry such complexity.

I'm not saying you are wrong; the new cars might well be way more complex in ways that might cause people to spend more time troubleshooting, I wouldn't know.

I haven't dealt with anything really more complex than the early 'aughts toyota... at least up until that point, the electronics made it way easier for a shadetree mechanic like me to solve problems. There's all sorts of ways to get diagnostic codes out of the thing; on the bmw, you did this dance where you turned it on, then floored the gas a certain number of times, and then the 'check engine' light would tap out a code you could look up in the manual, just like beep codes on a motherboard. On my Toyota, I hook up the OBD thing and it gives me a code I can plug into google and get youtube videos of how to fix it. I've never dealt with an electrical problem more complex than one of the the (what do you call them? the short wire things that go from the coils to the spark plugs on the bmw) going out of spec in terms of resistance, but that was pretty easy to diagnose with the manual and multimeter.

But if it really is the complexity that creates the cost, why was it so expensive to pay someone else to service my simple 325is?

Factors such as location, brand, and demand are important. Fixing BMWs is generally more complex than fixing a comparable Japanese or American model due to specialty tools, software, and complexity. Their wiring system is closer to what you'd find on a data center than what you'd find on the typical car.

I currently still turn wrenches as a hobby and work on higher end Euro cars (Ferrari, Porsche, etc.) and it only gets worse. :)

Lexus is nowhere near Mercedes

Absolutely. One is headquartered in Germany and the other in Japan/USA. Lexus cars are more reliable, though.

There's a market for used taxicabs and police vehicle. It's not a very vibrant market, but a car with a working engine will fetch something before being considered for its scrap value.