Have you ever sat in a new Tesla? It feels like something from Star Trek. Not in the traditional "Holy crap, I'm driving the future" sense; more in the sense that it feels like a vehicle from a world where traditional standards of wealth have been abolished, and luxury goods have lost cache in favor of technological advancement.

Captain Picard always made that future seem like a nice place to live. But that's definitely not the world we inhabit today. And that fact is going to spell trouble for Elon Musk's growing electric car company unless Tesla can up its interior game post-haste.

Tesla has carved out a nice little niche selling high-end EVs to wealthy customers in part because there's never been any other vehicle to directly compare them to. If you wanted to spend $100,000-plus today on an electric car that isn't a Tesla, your best bet would be a Chevy Bolt ... and another Chevy Bolt.

But that won't be the case much longer. By around decade's end, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, and BMW, among others, will have released full-blown EVs with Tesla-spec ranges and capabilities. And unlike Tesla, those companies take luxury seriously. They know the value of fine materials, of elegant interior design, of the little touches that help people rationalize spending six figures on a car when they know deep down that a $20,000 vehicle would function just as well.

Just as importantly, those luxury car titans have massive resources and parts supplier networks already in place to buy those pieces in bulk. Daimler, Volkswagen A.G., and the BMW Group have been buying, building, and improving on their luxury cars interiors like their livelihoods depended upon it for decades—because they do—in order to woo the discerning well-off buyer. Tesla hasn't needed to worry about luxury features because it's been the only high-end EV in town for roughly a decade. But if Tesla wants to crack into the mainstream market, it needs to be able to compete on every level.

Outside of the cult of Teslarati, how many high-end car buyers, given the choice, will choose the car with the cabin that looks like this: