Zero Volt battery packs have needed replacement
 

In 5 years, zero Volt battery packs have needed replacement. :)

Zero Battery Degradation Replacements Giving Chevy Volts an Edge

My brother in law is pleased with his, 60,000 miles or so. He has # 64 I think.

So much for that red herring.

How do we know if the battery croaks it doesn't total out the vehicle?
Seems like something that could be kept quiet pretty easy.
Because we all know how truthful, forthcoming and ethical GM has been with electric vehicles in the past.

Well, In the 'Yota dealer i was a trainee in had in a 250K miles driven Prius used as a taxi with the original pack.

But a taxi is driven so often and Finland is a lot of highway so it may be that the battery is rarely drained.

How could a failed battery pack total a vehicle? Any vehicle, not just Volts. Only way it could do that would be a failure through large fire/explosion, and I do believe we'd hear about it if that happened :-)

There are several Volt packs from wrecked volts that have been re-purposed for DIY ev's over on DIY electric car and so far I haven't read of guys finding bad cells or weak packs. Doesn't mean there aren't any, but it's another mark on the wall for the quality of the Volt battery packs.