Also in RC car world it's generally preferred to have one cell per voltage step, I've had way more dual-cell(per series) packs fail than single ones. Though my experience is only 6s/~22v but it's "the same shit on a bigger scale" as far as I can comprehend.
You don't, if one cell fail you shut off the whole array of cells that is in series. But a pack has several arrays of cells.
I have often wondered if it would be worth designing an EV battery that can permanently short out a bad cell in a string, perhaps by deliberately disabling balancing, letting the bad cells voltage fall to zero, and then perhaps having a single use 'bypass' that latches on.
It wouldn't be a seamless user experience, because if you discharge the cell to say 0.5 volts but then the user tries to charge their car, you can't let them, since you cannot safely charge a lithium cell which has fallen below the minimum voltage, but you also cannot bypass it till the voltage falls to zero. Could be done automatically at 3am though like system updates.
Either way you need some form of overbooking / compensating capacity.
