What actually happened: a cottage industry for repairing the battery packs sprung up to meet demand or when they'd fail, which wasn't that often (and indeed, Hybrid Camrys became the standard taxi cab in a number of US cities, racking up hundreds of thousands of miles on their batteries.) There are shops all around the country that do cell replacement now and getting your hybrid battery pack serviced is less painful than a lot of major engine repairs.
Bolt EVs were (in large part due to GM's extremely conservative charge profiles for DCFC) seeing much less battery degradation than expected. Right up until the manufacturing defects reared their head...and GM has replaced all the batteries, giving them a very long warranty...8, maybe 10 years? I forget which.
> If ev's ever come down in price
You can buy several EV models new for under $30k, which is substantially less than the median car price in the US.