Tesla did electric right. Make it luxury, then make one that far more people can afford, but make look like this: when the competition looks like this:
Eh. It's a toss up for me. On the one hand, I like the 3's proportions better overall. On the other hand, there's nothing really going on with the front end. It looks like they didn't finish designing it. That said, with the Bolt, if no one told me, I wouldn't have guessed it was an electric car. If just figure it for another ugly Chevy commuter car, like the Cruz. That kind of says something about the normalcy of the design. Nissan and BMW could take notes on that.
I actually love the lack of a grill. It's bold and honest. It doesn't need one, so it doesn't have one. The Bolt (and so many other cars) have so many lines that seem to be an effort to over-compensate for a convergence on form. Pontiac was the worst offender, but I think that was ok, since they were going for the spoiler demographic. IMO the Model 3 embraces it's form and function.
I think also too, the cars are designed for different crowds. To go with kleinbl00's Ferrari example, People who buy Ferarris do it in large part because they want you to know they bought a Ferarri, so they're designed in such a way that anyone who sees one, knows what it is immediately. The same is probably true for the Tesla 3, so they designed it in such a way that there will be no doubt in people's mind what car they're seeing. They're aiming for a savy crowd, people who are more than comfortable dropping $1,000 on their I-Pad for a place in line for an electric car. Chevrolet, on the other hand, is building a car for a different demographic. Normal people, who don't buy cars sight unseen on their I-Pads. So they need a car that looks more like every other car on the road, a car that looks right at home in any of their thousands of dealerships. That front grill adds a lot of normalcy to that car.IMO the Model 3 embraces it's form and function.