Everything keeps going wrong for Boeing

LOSERS.

It looks like one cell failed, and caused a chain reaction.  If a Lion cell fails internally by shorting out,
It rapidly overheats to the point of actually catching on fire. Without adequate separation and a barrier, the adjacent cells also overheat. Decades ago, a lantern battery using low internal resistance cells, had to be taken off the market, until a circuit breaker or fuse was added internally.
(If shorted out it tended to cause a fire with out the breaker or fuse.)  The Li batteries give off toxic and flammable gases and liquids when they overheat and "blow".  Not something I'd want on an aircraft, unless it's a RC Model.  I'd think that on as large an aircraft as a 787, the additional weight penalty of other battery chemistry choices is out weighed by the relative safety. 

This is what happens when a company offshores too much of the production of their product.   It's not just the batteries, either, that are haunting the 787.  Much of the Dreamliner is produced overseas, and Boeing has had multiple problems of product quality - having to invent patchwork fixes or sometimes redoing components from scratch.  Not all countries and cultures have the same kind of regulation on quality control as the US does - even on something as potentially dangerous as a shoddily constructed airliner.  And don't blame Boeing for trying to maximize profits by using low-cost offshore suppliers - that's all part of the new emphasis on a one-world global economy.  Plus, offshoring may even be required for them to be able sell their planes to carriers in certain countries, or to get approval to fly their planes in those countries at all.  You know,  "you must build x percent of your planes' structure in our country, or we won't certify the planes to fly here".  And then add in this: not all cultures place the same value on life that we do - witness China's utter amazement when America went nuts over bad gluten in pet food,  mold in drywall, and lead in the paint on kid's toys produced there.  America gets a bad rap for putting profits first, but we aren't even close to being the worst offenders in that department.  The sad thing to all this is, at the end of the day the world is gloating at Boeing's problems - look at the big American company putting out unsafe airplanes - when it's items produced around the world that are behind it in the first place.  Hmm - you don't see the media pointing that out, either.  Nope - America bashing is "in" on press row.  What a sad world we live in...