Tesla Model 3's sparse interior may be key to hitting cost, production targets

Keep it simple, stupid.

That's the mindset Tesla has adopted for the strikingly sparse interior of its Model 3 sedan, the electric vehicle that racked up a mind-blowing 325,000 advance orders within a week of its unveiling.

Bringing the EV to market by the end of 2017, hitting its $35,000 target base price and doing all this at volumes the automaker never has achieved? It sounds, well, problematic.

But helping Tesla's cause is the remarkably straightforward interior design. There's no instrument panel in front of the driver. No tangible buttons or remote knobs, levers or touchpads controlling any screens built into the dashboard.

Instead, a single touch screen, 15 inches wide, protrudes from the center console. It controls nearly every ancillary function not related to driving the car.

The Verge says the screen "looks like it could've been pulled off a Lenovo workstation pilfered from an office cubicle." Wired calls the interior "sleek and minimalist." Road & Track deems the whole setup "completely bizarre."

Reacting to the reaction, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the unusual interior will "make sense" later on.

Whatever your take, the setup is crucial because it saves the company significant time and money in both the r&d and production phases of the Model 3.

"That's a huge part of it," said Ed Kim, vice president of industry analysis at AutoPacific. "The Model 3 is a car that even if you weren't accounting for the EV powertrain, it's pretty high-tech for $35,000," so it's important that Tesla look for every way it can save money and headaches.

The single screen also allows the company to build a single version of the car for right- and left-hand-drive markets, swapping only the steering wheel rather than a complicated instrument panel.

Time is of the essence for the Model 3. Musk insists deliveries will begin by the end of 2017. Many analysts expect deliveries in meaningful numbers won't happen until 2018 at the earliest. Barclays Capital says 2019 is more likely.

The Model 3 also has broad implications for Tesla since it moves the automaker out of the realm of niche luxury vehicles and into more mainstream offerings. It's part of Tesla's plan to build 500,000 vehicles a year by 2020, a feat that will pose a daunting challenge for an automaker unaccustomed to that kind of volume.

Despite the high stakes, Tesla isn't alone in its approach to simplifying its interiors.

Car companies are beginning to consolidate screens and computers inside their cars to save money, speed development and make it easier to deliver over-the-air software updates, said Danny Shapiro, senior director of automotive at Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker Nvidia Corp., whose customers include Audi, BMW and Tesla.

He cited the "virtual cockpit" in the Audi TT and R8 sports cars, which use a single display behind the steering wheel to handle navigation, entertainment and phone calls alongside the speedometer and other traditional gauges.

"Automakers want to streamline development, cut costs and create a system that gets better over time," Shapiro said. "A single, centralized car computer that serves many functions and controls many aspects of the car can be updated much more easily than a highly distributed system."

Going from two screens and two computers down to one of each can free up funds for a bigger screen and faster computer. Such a system is more expensive than the ones used today, Shapiro said, but "it is certainly less expensive than two of them."

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