Let's take these one at a time.
1) I am used to designing products with gross margins over 50% and dominant market share - with the goal of employing people. To do that there is a lot of obsession over details. The customer needs to recommend the product with no qualifications. 2mm on a handle is not a detail - it is of first order importance. So there is an obsession with details related to contribution dollars, related to gainful employment, homes and sending kids to college for everyone in the company. Visual perception of differences (and how they play out) is foundational. So, yes, you are right. Everything is posted through a translation of an image, with a lens obsessed with contribution dollars.
2) The oddness comes partly from a very strong desire to see all the people at Tesla realize a return on their hard work. Success for Tesla is well posed based on the quality of their team. A truly gifted designer once told me, "It is hard to perform better than your team." The people at Tesla have a singular opportunity to do truly great products. But on the political power scale, ergonomists are subordinate to designers. The skinny handle looks better. I was concerned the ergonomic people would get run over, and the product would fail. Peculiar phasing comes from trying too hard. And having to translate.
3) I am not sure the door handle is 2 mm taller in profile. I hope it is, because the point/psi load on people using the original handles was too high, (based on a handle I designed a while back). If it is 2mm taller in profile, I think that because of the change in length to height aspect ratio, taking the width as a given based on a 95th percent hand. The handles look less like pencils and more like rectangles (books). Again, this is more about hope than knowledge.
So a visually oriented person, obsessed with contribution dollars, who recognizes a singular moment and wants it to turn out well for society - except for the shorts. It is bad practice to ever wish ill toward, or bet against, a person.
