My evening driving stopped covering its costs after I logged 17 hours this week, and the report that Uber cut 3,300 people for robotaxis makes the direction hard to ignore. Are drivers here still using Uber, splitting time with another platform, or leaving app-based driving entirely, and why?
Your net hourly rate after fuel, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and unpaid waiting matters more than the robotaxi headline. Multi-apping can cut dead time, but it cannot rescue bad rates or an oversupplied market. If several apps still fail to clear your minimum after expenses, leaving app driving is the practical move rather than waiting for Uber to improve.
A driver in a robotaxi test city faces a different future than someone working suburbs where autonomous cars may be years away, but both can get squeezed by weak fares right now. I agree with @mr_coder on tracking net pay, though I’d treat the layoffs as a warning to avoid depending on Uber as a long-term job, not proof that every driver is finished today.
The missing detail is whether those cuts were actually tied to replacing drivers, or whether Uber was reducing office roles while shifting money toward autonomous vehicle partnerships. Those are very different things. Robotaxis may be the long-term direction, but low fares, unpaid miles, insurance, and vehicle wear can make driving unprofitable well before automation reaches your city.
I’m less optimistic than @mr_coder about simply tracking net pay. Once your numbers show several bad weeks, tracking becomes confirmation rather than a fix. At that point, Uber makes more sense as an occasional app for unusually busy periods, not something you schedule regular hours around. Splitting time with other apps may help, but only if you reject weak offers instead of accepting more miles to stay occupied.
Drivers are not universally done, but depending on one platform probably is. The immediate threat is Uber controlling the rates while you absorb nearly all the operating costs.
Don’t let a scary corporate headline dictate a decision your own pay records have already made.
If a week of evenings driving has failed to make back the amount it costs to do the work, the robotaxi timeline is almost beside the point. Uber could put off autonomous cars for a decade and those hours would still be best spent elsewhere. The company is far more interested in “independence” when it comes to fuel, maintenance, taxes, and wrecks, but much less so when it comes to their drivers’ ability to control pricing.
I partly disagree with @hyperscript_86 on the importance of figuring out which employees were cut. That matters if you own Uber stock or work at headquarters. For a driver, it does not change tonight’s offers. The useful comparison is what the same block of time could earn somewhere else, including the commute, taxes, benefits, and wear on your car. A basic hourly shift that looks less flexible can still come out ahead once paid downtime, workers’ comp, and predictable income enter the picture.
Flexibility does have value, especially for someone who cannot commit to a fixed schedule, but it comes at a price. As long as Uber pays badly enough that you’re effectively paying for flexibility with vehicle depreciation and unpaid labor, that’s a pretty expensive calendar feature. Set a minimum about what you need out of an evening and go home when the app is clearly not delivering. Sitting around waiting for a lousy couple hours’ drive to make up for a bad start often just turns a bad two-hour drive into a bad five-hour drive.
Drivers aren’t all done; airports, events, bad weather, late-night gaps, and certain markets can all still be worth periods. What looks finished is the idea that simply being available to more hours reliably can produce more income. Uber can add cars, adjust incentives, change dispatching, or eventually put in place self-driving cars. You can’t negotiate any of that from the driver seat.
So I wouldn’t quit just the same reason that robotaxis, and I’d keep driving just because automation hasn’t made its way to your area. Treat Uber like a buyer making bids for your time and your vehicle. If it’s lousy, say no to the sale. The app isn’t owed a loyalty program from the person selling.
Stop scheduling regular evening blocks for a week and use those hours to test a realistic replacement. That is less drastic than deleting the app, but it stops Uber from automatically getting your available time after the numbers have turned against you.
The leap from office layoffs to “drivers are finished” is what confused me. Those cuts do not tell you when an autonomous car will serve your neighborhood, handle unusual pickups, or operate profitably in every kind of weather. They do suggest that protecting driver income is unlikely to be part of Uber’s long-term plan. I would read the headline as a warning against dependence, not as proof that every driver is about to disappear.
I slightly disagree with @vladthesprite’s idea of treating each offer like a simple bid. It sounds clean, but the app does not always give you enough information to price the job properly. A decent-looking request can turn into an apartment-gate delay, a long pickup, a destination with no return rides, or time spent dealing with a cancellation. By the time you know the real cost, you have already supplied part of the labor. Setting a minimum helps, but it cannot remove that uncertainty.
The comparison I would make is Uber versus what you could realistically build during those same hours. That might be a part-time shift, contract work, training for something else, or even keeping the evenings free while applying for better work. A regular job can look less attractive on the advertised hourly rate, yet come out ahead because your car stays parked and your income does not depend on the next notification. There is value in knowing what the evening will pay before you leave home.
Drivers are not all done, but your routine may already be done. You could keep the account for rare high-demand periods without letting it control your weekly schedule. Robotaxis may become the bigger problem later. Right now, the immediate problem is giving prime hours to work that has already shown it cannot reliably pay for itself.
If you’re still making payments on the car you’re driving, the math is less attractive than you might think. You’re not only paying for fuel and wear and tear but financing a depreciating asset to give cheap capacity to Uber. That’s a big difference in weeks of break-even for many drivers.
@dima_rust’s suggestion to blank out one week of evening blocks and test something else is the most useful thing in this thread, so I won’t repeat it. Where I’d push back is the whole ‘treat each offer like a bid’ framing from @vladthesprite. It’s a nice mindset, but you’re pricing blind on most requests, and the app knows that. You can’t negotiate with a party that hides the destination until after you’ve committed the pickup miles.
Robotaxis aren’t your problem tonight. A car payment plus flat fares is. Sort that out before you worry about what a driverless fleet does in three years.
Expect a slow squeeze, not a morning when every driver gets switched off. Robotaxis do not have to replace every driver to damage the job. They only need to absorb enough easy, repeatable trips in busy areas to reduce surge and leave human drivers with long pickups, awkward destinations, cleanup risk, and dead return miles.
That is why “they won’t reach the suburbs for years” is not very comforting. Uber can use automated cars where they work best and push the leftovers onto contractors. The remaining trip count might look healthy while the quality of those trips gets worse.
The layoff headline is not proof that drivers are finished, but your own results are enough to stop treating regular evenings as dependable income. Drivers may still exist for a long time. A decent driver market can disappear much sooner.