I wonder if the use of pouch cells may in the end turn out to be the wrong choice. Isn't it strange that all incumbent manufactures use those while a good chunk of startups + Tesla went with cylindrical?
This entire issue could have been solved with better balancing circuitry.<p>If a single cell out of hundreds is bad, the circuitry should be able to wait till that cell is depleted, and then temporarily (or even permanently!) take it out of the circuit, allowing the remaining capacity in the other cells to be used.