Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the design has a few too many un-necessary flourishes, and it probably won't age very well. It definitely grabs your attention, but in a few years when electric cars are less rare I bet it will look kind of gimmicky.
Regular car manufacturers making electric cars want to visually distinguish then from their normal vehicles. But any good-looking design consistent with their existing design language is something they've already built. So they make something that's either ugly (i3) or impractical (i8). Tesla doesn't have regular cars to distinguish from, so they can afford to make something that just looks like a normal luxury car (…
The electric car as a virtuous statement matters to the company as well. VW has made an e-Golf that is indistinguishable from an oil burning Golf. The NOx Incident has people saying VW is a dinosaur with no plans for the electrically powered future. They should have made a headline-grabber instead.