With regards to thermals, my writing may have been a bit unclear. The thermal issue was definitely only during my one trip, when it was in the car with me and had been charging + running for a couple hours of driving. There was sunlight but it wasn't in direct sunlight. I suspect charging + running (music) + ambient heat was part of the problem, but I've never had a phone be that hot even on a long drive like that. I've been fairly careful otherwise to not place it in direct sunlight, mostly because I'm afraid the heat will damage the battery in some way.
As for the battery, I'll have to do some digging there, although I can't get to that today. Those are great tips to look into though, thanks for posting them. I'll note that I haven't tested the latest kernel, so if any patches have gone into the Librem 5 regarding power in the last three weeks, I probably wasn't able to quantify that!