The lead-acid batteries of 2004 were terrible. They degraded quickly, weighed a ton, and offered poor performance in cold weather. Rivat needed lithium-ion, but in 2002, a lithium battery pack would have cost more than the rest of the car combined. The Legacy: Did the Geocar 2006 Influence Modern EVs? You will not find a Geocar 2006 in a museum often. Production numbers were minuscule—perhaps fewer than 20 true prototypes and a handful of pre-series units. However, the idea of the Geocar is alive and well.

Look at the (2012). Tandem seating? Check. Narrow width? Check. Limited range? Check. The Twizy was a commercial success (over 30,000 units sold). Renault’s designers have never publicly cited the Geocar, but the engineering lineage is undeniable. The Twizy solved the Geocar’s problems by using lithium batteries and marketing itself explicitly as a "quadricycle," not a car.

In France, the Geocar fell into a regulatory no-man's land. Was it a car? Was it a quadricycle (moped)? Safety regulations for "real cars" required crash tests that a 400kg fiberglass pod could not pass at highway speeds. To sell it legally, Rivat would have needed millions in crash safety development—capital he did not have.