Let's just say that the ability to take off from a dead start is a fun thing to demonstrate for passengers that haven't been in an electric vehicle yet. :-) I

Let's just say that the ability to take off from a dead start is a fun thing to demonstrate for passengers that haven't been in an electric vehicle yet. :-) I have not driven it on snow, so I can't answer how well that works. But there are no gears, nor a need for one. ICE cars generate maximum torque in a relatively narrow range of speeds, which is why you need a transmission to keep the car engine where it is happy while the car itself goes at a wider range of speeds. By contrast electric cars generate their maximum torque at 0 mph, and work fine over a much wider range of speeds. Early Teslas tried to have gears, but the torque was murder on the transmission. So now on the high performance models they simply have different gearing on the front and back wheels. With the idea that at low speed you get most of the force from the back, and at high speed you'll get more power from the front wheels. (The basic one drives like a sports car anyways.)