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Boeing's calculation of a battery reliability threshold would be related to cost of manufacturing vs cost of potential lawsuits related to failures. If they are highly unlikely to fail, and the cost of manufacturing them to an even higher spec is more than the accepted risk, they will not do it. Since the FAA cares less about Boeing's profits and more about the public's safety (hopefully), they would likely have a higher threshold.

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Safety (ability to cause harm) and reliability (potential to not meet requirements) thresholds are different animals.

I work in a regulated industry (medical) and I can assure you that I have never seen a Safety threshold that was in any way related to manufacturing or any other cost. The thresholds are always set according to how much harm can be caused and the likelihood of a harmful event.

Reliability, on the other hand, has tradeoffs relating to costs. However, in this case, an unreliable subsystem can have a clear safety impact, so its reliability directly feeds into the Hazard calculations. In other words, Safety concerns would dominate.

I hope that actually conveys what I'm trying to say. A bit rushed right now :-)

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