It would definitely shred the drivetrain. The Tesla's Drive Unit is already the weak link in the chain when it comes to hard acceleration, they've been failing

It would definitely shred the drivetrain. The Tesla's Drive Unit is already the weak link in the chain when it comes to hard acceleration, they've been failing left and right after a few thousand miles which caused Tesla to bump their powertrain warranty up to 125,000/Unlimited miles depending on the model (the 65kwh version has the lesser warranty). The Drive Unit in the Model S was designed by Borg Warner and looks roughly similar to this cutaway of the Roadster's gearset: http://www.sae.org/dlymagazineimages/web/516/7953_8579.png http://www.sae.org/dlymagazineimages/web/516/7953_8579.png The issue is in the straight gear-to-gear interface where ~600NM of torque is transferred through a contact area measured in square centimeters. Modern metallurgy can produce some very strong alloys but any flaw means the gear teeth will wear at an incredible rate, leading to the widespread reports of noisy/failed Drive Units. I'd imagine that future designs will use a planetary gearset which spreads the force over more teeth/surface area, that type of gearset would look like this: http://www.rohloff.de/uploads/pics/planeten_start.en.jpg http://www.rohloff.de/uploads/pics/planeten_start.en.jpg