I'm going to disregard the bits about wings and the general engineering attitude at Boeing. It is simply not relevant.
Musk has one very important justification to make the statement he did: that battery caught fire. That alone is proof positive that he is right. If the charger should fail, is it then permissible that the batteries catch fire? If not then they are fundamentally unsafe.
For that reason alone this is a valid statement, and there are more justifications (such as BIG cells with LITTLE spacing which is problematic) for the use of the word 'fundamental'.
There is enough data available about the architecture for people with far more experience than you to make such statements, the amount of energy liberated from such a big cell should it go wrong is enormous and that alone is a reason to avoid big cells.
I'm sure Elon is picking up PR points here but you can't just discard what he is saying because he does not have engineering samples on his desk. The incident proves his point quite effectively, this design really does have problems.
I totally agree with this and I can tell you that I have been in the same position as Musk in an analogous situation. From what my competitor was saying about their own product it was several red flags. There is no way such and such can be true unless you are doing X and Y wrong.
A battery on fire is not necessarily an indicator of a problem in the design. It could be a manufacturing, software, or maintenance defect. It's too early to jump to conclusions. However, unless it's a maintenance defect, it's almost certainly an indicator of a flaw in quality control and verification.
Musk has one very important justification to make the statement he did: that battery caught fire. That alone is proof positive that he is right. If the charger should fail, is it then permissible that the batteries catch fire? If not then they are fundamentally unsafe.
For that reason alone this is a valid statement, and there are more justifications (such as BIG cells with LITTLE spacing which is problematic) for the use of the word 'fundamental'.
There is enough data available about the architecture for people with far more experience than you to make such statements, the amount of energy liberated from such a big cell should it go wrong is enormous and that alone is a reason to avoid big cells.
I'm sure Elon is picking up PR points here but you can't just discard what he is saying because he does not have engineering samples on his desk. The incident proves his point quite effectively, this design really does have problems.