I think Musk got out ahead of this one actually.

He called them out after the first incident happend: http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/02/26/elon-...

Boeing probably should have licensed Tesla tech after the first incident.

As PR moves go "calling them out" was a good one.

But even if Boeing had achieved the extremely unlikelihood of being able to get Tesla car batteries modified, fitted to their aircraft and approved by the relevant licensing bodies, it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to the totally unrelated Honeywell bit of kit suspected of catching fire in the Ethiopian 787

I don't think Elon was suggesting Tesla batteries so much as the batteries similar to the ones used on the Falcon 9.

I feel that with low enough risk rates, prevalence in new battery products will still increase to the point that Lithium Ion and similar high end batteries are currently at. When cell phones and laptops were making frequent news stories by exploding, it scared a lot of people, but advances in battery technology were made to make them safer and now they are ubiquitous.

I agree that a widely held negative view of the technology would be detrimental to many of our favorite startups. However, so far it seems that the popular (not political) press has been very factually oriented. For instance the bad press from the several problems that Fisker had with launching their vehicle did not spill over and cloud Tesla's reputation. (Although not all of Fisker's problems had to do with batteries, obviously.) Hopefully Boeing is only ruining their own rep (though the impact on US-headquartered manufacturing is unfortunate). Tesla is, so far, unscathed.

Interestingly enough, Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Staubel created some kind of hybrid propulsion system for aircraft, that I believe was purchased by Boeing. So there are definitely connections (if not continuity of technology) between the companies.

[Edited for clarity]

This particular battery is a somewhat old battery technology commercial LiMnO2 batteries date to the 70s