Geico Corporate Communications wouldn’t respond to Civil Beat’s numerous inquiries about why it won’t insure electric vehicles, as CB reported Wednesday in: Why Does Geico Insurance Refuse Electric Car Owners Coverage? 

But this hasn’t stopped Geico from publishing consumer advice about electric cars.

Its page, “Are Electric Vehicles Right for You?” warns of the “huge price premiums” associated with hybrids and EV’s and the time it takes to charge the cars.

The website suggests holding off on buying EV’s:

“Unless you just have to own the latest EV on the market, it may be worth your while to wait and see what other people’s experiences are with their vehicles, especially as mileage improves for gasoline-powered cars,” it says.

The web post is written by a Canadian mechanic named, Phil Bailey, who maintains his own blog, “Phil Bailey’s Auto World.” 

Bailey’s not particularly taken with the “green movement” or electric cars. 

On Phil Bailey’s Auto World, he writes: 

Green technologies, especially the electric car, are far from proving themselves.

Look, if you were to peel back the left’s support for green energy and its desire to reduce carbon emissions, what you find is a group of people who have fundamental problems with the USAs’ energy consumption. 

They don’t like the fact they consume 24 percent of the world’s energy and they say it’s a tragedy that the average American consumes twice the energy of a person in Japan, or six times the average Mexican. They also think the U.S. should pare back its size, its influence and its capabilities.

But you don’t get to be the world’s biggest economy on a snickers bar and a shoe string. It takes energy and lots of it.

Civil Beat tracked Bailey down to see if he had any insight on why Geico isn’t insuring electric vehicles. 

He said that it’s because electric vehicles have costly maintenance problems, including the need to replace the batteries. 

“The battery technology is bad and it’s not ready for primetime by any means,” he said. 

Bailey also said that EV’s have very little benefit when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions, compared to gasoline fueled vehicles. “You haven’t really solved any kind of environmental problem,” he said.

Bailey said that he was paid by Geico to write a monthly column for the company on EV’s for about 10 years – up until the recession hit in 2009. 

Gieco, which didn’t respond to our numerous inquiries about its EV insurance policy, also didn’t respond to a question about why Bailey was chosen to give advice on the cars.

Jeff Mikulina, executive director of Blue Planet Foundation, said that “it’s unclear if the author is referring to electric vehicles from this century or another century.”

Here’s Mikulina’s response to Bailey’s comments:

— In Hawaii the benefit is clear; the average gasoline passenger vehicle will emit about 40% more greenhouse gas per mile than an electric vehicle.

— From the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy: On the average grid mix and on a full-fuel-cycle basis, plug-in EVs today offer major reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles (see Table 1):
http://aceee.org/blog/2013/06/getting-most-plug-electric-vehicles

— As the share of electricity that comes from clean and renewable sources grows, so do the environmental benefits. For combustion engines to “solve environmental problems” they’d have to run on locally produced biofuels.

2) To the point about “battery technology is bad”:

— Batteries are rapidly becoming less costly. Before 2009, a 100-mile range electric battery cost $33,000. Today it costs about $17,000, and it is projected to drop to $10,000 by the end of 2015. http://energy.gov/articles/top-10-things-you-didn-t-know-about-electric-vehicles

— Tesla just announced battery swap option that can replace battery faster and cheaper than filling a conventional tank of gas: http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/21/autos/tesla-battery-swap/index.html

— Battery technology continues to advance: Oak Ridge National Lab recently tested new all-solid sulfur-based battery with four times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries.  http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_releases/get_press_release.cfm?ReleaseNumber=mr20130605-00

— Obama announced today that his 2014 budget increases funding for clean technology by 30 percent across all agencies: http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan

3) To the point about “public in general is very leery”:

— According to Department of Energy: Currently there are 13 electric vehicle models on the market, and the number continues to rise. For model years 2013 and 2014, manufacturers are expected to debut at least 18 new plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles. They wouldn’t be manufacturing these models if there isn’t a demand.  http://energy.gov/articles/top-10-things-you-didn-t-know-about-electric-vehicles

— In February 2013, Nissan LEAF hit benchmark of 50,000 vehicles sold. (Bloomberg wants 1/3 of taxi fleet in NYC to be electric by 2020. He’s also calling for 10,000 EV car charging spots in the city by 2020.)

 

(Photos: screenshots from Phil Bailey’s Auto World website)

— Sophie Cocke