I had a Honda Civic hybrid that had its battery pack die back in 2009. It was going to be a $3000 repair with a 2 week "its in the shop" while waiting for the battery (it wasn't something they stocked).
I bought a new car (an Insight) because I needed a car (it was on a road trip). The value of the Civic as a trade in would be near zero - the value of the trade in was similar to the cost of the repair.
This can be seen even today with my Insight if I was to try to trade it in or repair it - my 2010 Insight has a trade in value of $2620 - $3707 (and it is in fine working condition).
If this was about a car that had a value of $3000 when working that needed a repair of $3000 to get it back into that range of working - that's the insurance definition of totaled.
A battery pack for the Honda is Insight is $2049 : https://bumblebeebatteries.com/products/hybrid-batteries/hon...
If the battery fails on my Insight, I'll be getting that repair rather than getting a new car because it's still cheaper than a new car. But if it was a "dealing with insurance" then it is by definition totaled.
As a sanity check. Cars last ~25 years on average. So 100% new EV’s represent roughly a 4% changeover per year. Average load per EV works out to roughly 450 watts, because they use a lot of power when their on but most people aren’t driving that long per day.
Actual use depends on various factors like charging efficiency etc but roughly 15,000 miles at 4 kWh / mile is only 3,750 kWh per year + charging inefficiency call it 4,000 kWh [per EV] * 282 million [cars] * 0.04 [% new cars per year] = 45 TWh per year vs ~4,000 TWh of total US electricity demand. (Edit: fixed units.)
By comparison demand increased by roughly 100TWh/year from 1985 to 1990. Demand only really leveled out between 2010 and now. https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...