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Mini Cab, Max IrritationsBy Josh Landess Open Access Article Originally Published: August 09, 2003
Greg Paquette is the founder of San Diego's Mini Cab a short-trip, call-ahead Limo service that uses Ford and Chrysler Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs). Visitors to the 2003 Super Bowl may remember seeing one of his vehicles shuttling shoppers, tourists and revellers around the downtown area. Business has been on-again, off-again for two years... but it's not for a lack of trying or customers. And therein lies a tale worth sharing with EV World readers. MiniCab is admittedly a new concept in America, though a similar service operated for a number of years in France. Greg claims that only San Diego and Nepal have precisely this type of EV business and as a result the City has had difficulty deciding precisely how to classify and regulate his business. Officials have told him that his service doesn't quite fit the same class as a taxi, a tour bus, a jitney or a pedi-cab. So, they've issued him Class P (under 10 passengers) limousine license, which entitles him to carry paying passengers, but his vehicles cannot be hailed. As might be expected, conventional taxi companies have strenuously fought his right to be in business. They claim, for example, that their drivers sometimes have to wait years for medallions and permits, so why shouldn't the same holdups apply to his operation? Greg has been trying to get an ordinance which fairly and clearly defines his new form of transportation. To conserve his resources and in response to the legal situation, Greg at times curtailed or ceased operations and laid off his workers -- at his peak he had grown to between 7 and 10. When I spoke to him he was operating single-handedly with one vehicle while awaiting a July ruling from the Metropolitan Transportation Development Board (MTDB). Greg told me that if it had not been for City Councilman Inzunza's filibustering in a recent meeting -- going against a committee's recommendations, and referring the matter to the MTDB with a "Punt, punt, punt!" statement-- he might already have gained the ordinance that he sought. I sat down with Greg -- who owned his own successful web development and hosting company before starting MiniCab -- recently and asked him how the idea for MiniCab came about. GP: I've lived downtown for 15 years. My wife and I love eating out. We walk four or five blocks to our favorite restaurant, the Bella Luna, as an example. After, we are very full and we really don't want to go into a Pedi-Cab (a bicycle-pulled vehicle) because we don't like Pedi-Cabs for whatever reason. You cannot ever get a taxi Cab and they're kind of stinky and they don't want to go [on such a short trip], so we end up uncomfortably walking home. So out of necessity for ourselves, we had the idea: Wouldn't it be cool if there was a nice clean friendly way to get home? So this was a solution for us. EVW: You use GEMs and Th!nk Neighbors. Tell me about them. GP: We have five Chryslers and five Fords. The only thing that I don't like is the inconsistency with the batteries. How the batteries work is you've got six 12 volt batteries running in a series so it's 72 volts. If you have six batteries at optimal, you would have 72 volts of juice, whereas if you have one out of those six that's a faulty battery, which is very common, up to say 4½ or 5 volts, then now you're dealing with 25 volts instead of 72. [So it is a matter of one of the batteries being the] weakest link in the chain.
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