Neat video :) But misleading slightly....

Here's a better explanation I found from a commentor at Autoblog named @Rotation:

2,000 lb-ft is not a lot of torque at the wheels. It certainly has that much.

Conventional torque measurements are at the shaft of an engine. This is multiplied up by the gearbox and the differential.

My Cadillac has a "mere" 332 lb-ft of torque. It has a first gear gear ratio of 4.06:1 and a differential final drive of 3.42:1.

So in first gear, it develops 332 * 4.06 * 3.42 or 4610 lb-ft of torque at the wheels.

A road-dyno like this measure force at the wheels, this is divided by the radius of the wheel/tire combo to determine torque at the wheels. If you want to know torque at the motor shaft you enter the final drive ratio and the gear ratios and it divides by those.

You can do the same on this car if you want to calculate the torque at the motor output. But it doesn't produce a terribly meaningful number. Given it has no gearbox, an EV like this could easily produce 1,000lb-ft of torque at the motor and still accelerate slower than my measly V6 Cadillac because it doesn't have a gearbox to multiply it. You'd look at 1,000lb-ft, think "wow" and then see the thing creep off the line.

You either have to compare at a place where shaft speeds are similar (input to the differential) or just compare horsepower, because it takes into account different shaft speeds.

Ideally, we'd compare force at the wheels, removing all the gear ratios and the implicit gearing of different wheel sizes too. It'd be great to move in that direction but I doubt if that's going to happen.

So again, stick to horsepower, it's the most fool-proof number. Which is why it's so popular.

However you perceive it, Tesla does have some pretty decent power!