Nowhere near as much of automotive manufacturing is as automated as people think. Fitting panels etc is often a robot assisted job but not 100% machine. During production trials for new cars ALOT of time is spent trying to get the panels to fit together correctly, even getting the doors to seal correctly and be water proof isn't a given to begin with.

Indeed. I once temped at a car plant where I wore chain mail gloves to manually remove body panels coming out of the die, place them on a cart, and spot check a random sample for defects.

Often, those panel intersections look like shit.

I have a Nissan LEAF and have owned it since new (so I know it's never been hit). Looking at the panel fit between the rear bumpers and the quarter panels, that car looks worse than some cars I've seen that have been hit.

Tesla apparently has very poor fit and finish.

>Tesla forums are littered with complaints about fit and finish. Have a look at the .pdf in this thread, which shows bad sealing, poor parts fitment and even rust on the rear seat brackets. [0]

And that is for the Model X, from what I've heard, the Model S was even worse.

http://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-x-is-suffering-from-qual...