[lldbg]

A bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but it is the power that makes the car accelerate, not torque. With gearing, any value of torque is possible at the wheels, but not for any given speed. A car with 300 Nm of torque but 100 kW of power will never accelerate faster than the same car, but with less Nm and say 150 kW of power. Gearing is suitably chosen according to power production, not torque. The answer to the question "At what RPM will I accelerate the fastest, for a given speed" is always the RPM at which peak power is produced - which may or may not be avaliable because of gearing, but usually you can come pretty close since the power curve is somewhat flat around a region of RPM. Typically.

[ce4]

Exactly. E.g. Diesel engines have a much lower maximum rpm limit (4.5-5.5k rpms) so they need to deliver that amount of power by delivering more torque at lower RPMs when compared to comparably powered petrol engines.

And electric car motors can draw almost maximum Amperes at very low rpms, hence the insane numbers of torque for electric cars