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The insurance company Geico won’t, for some seemingly inexplicable reason, cover electric vehicles for new customers.

By inexplicable, I mean that the company literally won’t explain why.

Civil Beat spent a week trying to get an answer from Geico about why the company that is famous for its Cockney-accented Gecko mascot doesn’t like electric cars.

The company systematically refuses to insure such non-gasoline-powered vehicles in Hawaii, although it makes an exception for some long-term customers. No one — not Geico’s general manager in Hawaii, nor its corporate communications team in Washington, D.C. — was willing to explain the logic of the company’s guidelines.

Geico is the island’s largest auto insurer — covering about one-fourth of all the vehicles on the road, according to information from Hawaii’s insurance division.

The company’s anti-electric guidelines offer a striking contrast to the federal government, which is into improving such technology. Federal policy is in line with environmental policies and a pressing desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The state government has also invested millions to promote electric vehicles through rebates and by developing an elaborate network of charging stations throughout the islands.

Geico clearly has doubts about electric cars, but not everywhere. The company does insure electric cars in California, perhaps due to the size of the electric vehicle market there.

And the company does cover hybrid vehicles, which use a combination of electric batteries and gasoline, according to Tim Dayton, GEICO’s general manager in Hawaii.

Also, customers in Hawaii whose previous gasoline-powered vehicle was insured by Geico might be able to get protection for electric cars, insurance representatives told Civil Beat.

But if you buy or lease an all-electric vehicle — which a growing number of people are doing — and then seek coverage, the company wants nothing to do with you.

In some ways, it seems like an odd business decision in a market like Hawaii.

The state has an to reduce oil consumption from ground transportation by 70 percent by the year 2030, and Hawaii is seen by many electric car manufacturers as an ideal market.

Unlike on the mainland, you can only drive so far in Hawaii, so drivers don’t tend to suffer from mainlanders’ “range anxiety,” which is the fear of a car battery dying far from a charging station. Statewide there are more than throughout the islands.

Dave Rolf, the executive director of the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association, said that the islands are to the electric car “what Napa is to the grape.”

It is unclear whether or not the Geico Gecko likes wine, but he and the company that he represents don’t seem interested in talking about electric cars.

When Civil Beat contacted the head of the automobile dealers association, several electric vehicle dealers, and the state energy office, all of them said that Geico’s decision not to cover electric cars was a surprise to them.

None of them have seen the notes that Geico sends out to electric car owners that say: “We regret that we cannot accept your request for insurance at this time.”

The specific reason, such letters say, is “Type of vehicle is unacceptable.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Kurt Speas, an electric vehicle salesman at Tony Nissan, which sells the Nissan Leaf. “It has an off-the-chart safety rating.”

Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Honolulu-based Blue Planet Foundation, a clean energy advocacy group, said it doesn’t make good business sense for Geico to reject the growing electric vehicle market.

There are about 1,400 electric vehicles on the road in Hawaii, but that number has doubled in the past year, and there are no signs of it abating any time soon. (There are more than 15,000 hybrid vehicles on the road.)

“We need to reduce every barrier to people buying electric vehicles,” said Mikulina. “The last thing we want is people saying, ‘Oh no, how are we going to insure it?’”

Does the Geico Gecko Have a Voice?

Geico has an entire department devoted to communications, but no one contacted by Civil Beat was willing to respond to repeated requests for an explanation of company guidelines on electric vehicles.

Civil Beat called Geico’s corporate communications department in Washington, D.C. numerous times last week, but no one answered the phone or returned our messages.

Finally on Friday, Civil Beat did reach a member of the public relations staff through the company’s operator. Tony Blue, a public relations coordinator for Geico, told Civil Beat that the office hadn’t received any of our voice messages. He said he would get back to us on Monday.

But when Civil Beat called him on Monday, he said, “I sent the request through and nobody responded back. So I don’t think we are going to respond to it.”

Locally, Tim Dayton, Geico’s general manager in Hawaii, said that he doesn’t know enough to explain why the company doesn’t insure electric vehicles. He promised that Christine Tasher from the company’s corporate communications department would contact us on Monday.

Tasher did not respond to queries by e-mail and by phone, and Civil Beat is still waiting for a call that will explain Geico’s dislike of electric vehicles.

And waiting.

In search of clues as to why Geico won’t insure electric cars, Civil Beat tracked down a Canadian mechanic who was hired by the company to write consumer advice about electric vehicles. Phil Bailey, who maintains his own website, “,” told Civil Beat that electric cars have major mechanical problems and aren’t “ready for primetime.” Read more about that, as well Blue Planet Foundation’s response, here:

Here’s one of the letters that Geico sends to customers with electric vehicles: