In an EV group that I subscribe to, one of the participants had this story to share:
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My 2022 Ioniq 5 was also written off by insurance when I hit something in the road and there was damage to the battery shield and a loony sized dent in the casing of the battery. No warnings on the dash. Car functioned perfectly. I spent 3 months trying to get insurance and the Hyundai dealership and Hyundai Canada to talk to each other…
At the end of it, no one would put that the car was safe in writing, insurance said the battery would have to be replaced, Hyundai priced the battery replacement at $56k plus labour and the car was a total loss. I couldn’t even buy it with a salvage title because I couldn’t register it to drive it or have it insured unless I replaced the battery. And there’s no one here to replace the battery.
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I asked Hyundai Canada - they referred me to my dealership. I called several dealerships and they all had the exact same price on the battery.
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I brought my vehicle to my dealership when it happened. They put it on a lift and looked at it like an ICE car and referred me to a collision shop. They didn’t do any battery pack evaluation, or even take off the shield to look at the pack.
No one at insurance looked at my car. After 6 weeks or so I got an email saying it was a total loss. Apparently battery assessment techniques exist, and the dealership can do them, but insurance never facilitated that. I spent 6 weeks trying to get them to reevaluate the stance that battery replacement was even required. I just couldn’t make headway. I continued driving the car the whole time. There was nothing wrong with it.
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I was told there are 5 master techs at my dealership. They would all certainly be capable of running diagnostics. I’m still shocked that incidental contact with something in the road could result in needing a full battery replacement. And even more shocked that the battery has a $56k price tag. I did what I could to try to educate in the hopes that it might help the next person… but it’s super hard to communicate with people who don’t want to communicate with you!
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I'm not sure where in Canada this person is located, but it is likely that the person is in the East Coast / Atlantic Canada. I've read of stories saying that in a lot of smaller East Coast and Maritime cities, they may or may not have certified EV techs at the dealership, even though the dealerships still sell the EVs there, so this could potentially be one of the cases like that.