Yeah, there's no getting a stock battery right now that won't be overstressed, as I'm learning as I do research for the batt series I'm writing... but I would love to see something like the Tornado at 3.7 V. You're right Ben--they have a design flaw that makes them unreliable, and for that reason I wouldn't stock 'em
yet. Scottbee is getting the XL eGo clone from eastmall and hopefully they've corrected the bad circutry or circuit board or wtf-ever is wrong with the eGo/Tornado in its current incarnation.
Getting good QC out of China on something like disposable e-cig batteries isn't going to happen, not by American standards, anyways. But just in the past 6 months I've seen it go from "meh, China" to "wtf, China?!" w/ stock from certain suppliers. The batts I bought months ago still work, but it seems like a lot of new customers that get batts from other suppliers are having problems. *shrugs* That's not something that a US based distributor can do a lot about, beyond... not choosing that manufacturer. At least not until we have a true corporate heavy hitter that can use buying power to demand improvement.
I do +1 the hooking up with a decent mod maker, as Drozd said, though stock batts def have a place in my arsenal too.
Ben--make V9
wildly successful, then hire a pet engineer to R&D for ya.

Then all of our dreams can come true.