Its weird because I know with EV they get a huge amount of steady torque and power at low rpm's and it remains consistent until they reach max power, but the way GT6 modeled it, its like trying to accelerate from 6th gear at a dead stop. Its odd, but I don't use EV cars much cause the silence is just weird to me.
That's because it
is like trying to accelerate from 6th gear at a dead stop. Well, more like staying in second gear when you look at the reduction ratio between the motor and transmission, but still.
A car accelerates because of torque
at the wheels. Torque at the flywheel is largely irrelevant because you can adjust gearing. For example, first gear in my car is 3.5:1, which gives a 3.5x torque multiplication. So if my engine is making 300 ft-lbs at the flywheel, the torque at the differential is over 1,000 ft-lbs. (The differential has it's own reduction gearing, which also multiplies torque, but since that's true for electric cars as well we need not delve into it as it will have the same effect on both systems.)
Now, of course my engine isn't making 300 ft-lbs of torque at all RPM. Off idle it's only going to have close to, say, 100 ft-lbs, for only 350 ft-lbs at the differential after the transmission's torque multiplication. If I feather the clutch and hold the engine at torque peak for the best launch (as magazines did for this car when they tested it), however, I can get close to the full peak amount of torque being sent to the transmission at launch.
The Tesla has a 2:1 drive from the motor to the differential. So if the electric motor also makes 300 ft-lbs, the differential sees 600 ft-lbs of torque. This is more torque right off idle, but the peak value is lower. At least for the time a gasoline vehicle is in first gear.
In my car, second gear is just a hair shorter (more torque multiplication) than 2:1, so the gas engine would still have a very slight advantage at peak torque when in second gear. However, the peak falls off for the gas engine in a way that isn't as true for electrics, so overall the electric would have a slight advantage once the gasoline vehicle was in second gear. By the time you're in 3rd and 4th gears, the advantage just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Plus, you don't have to shift between gears when accelerating, which has a huge effect on things like 0-60 times (you can lose a half-second or more just from whether a car can hit 60 in second gear or needs a shift to 3rd).
Still, I think you're right about the EVs not quite being modeled completely accurately since the published times for a Tesla Roadster are significantly better than what I can achieve on SSRX. If I had to guess, I'd speculate that it's due to not being able to "dump the clutch" in the electrics the way you can with the gasoline powered cars in the game. I think this changes how the game's physics engine handles the initial hole-shot.
