When conceived initially, it had some pretty interesting ideas. The thought process was probably like:
Hmm... What if we use stainless steel instead of regular steel and avoid all the expenses of the paint shop? But then we need to use thicker panels because stainless steel is not great mechanically. So let's double down on thickness and make the panels a load-bearing "exoskeleton", this will also help us to avoid the weight penalty of the frame! But we can't stamp panels that are this thick, we just don't have big enough presses. So let's try to do this "flat" design.
But they failed to achieve that. And now they have a regular boring body-on-the-frame car, with thick panels just adding useless weight and cutting down the battery range. And then there's this steer-by-wire gimmick because Elon really wanted the yoke to happen.
The only remaining true improvement is the 48V power-over-Ethernet architecture.