I'm sure if Tesla engineered the Model S today they'd do it differently. At the moment it's a car-shaped battery - a result of chasing range confidence. Once all that weight is in place I guess there's little penalty in engineering drivetrain components to handle Ludicrous Mode torque. As newer, more efficient batteries emerge it's possible that the weight of drivetrain components becomes more of an issue, and smarter transmissions can be built within those weight constraints.
As a novice carmaker you can see why Tesla would not overcomplicate the Model S design where they didn't have to - their tech was plenty pioneering-enough already.
At the other end of the 'experienced carmaker spectrum' BMW's i3 and i8 were engineering-led testbeds for technologies that are now becoming commonplace across the range.
My hybrid i8's front axle is a 2 speed e-axle by GKN - and then has a 20bhp electric motor to manage the handshake between the electric engine at the front, the conventional 6 speed auto box, and the petrol engine.
Perhaps its no surprise that there isn't an Alpina performance i8. Alpina apparently build a prototype performance variant, at BMW's request, to explore what might be possible. Alpina found that the challenge was recalibrating the powertrain for more power. Since there are hybrid race-prepped i8s, I'm led to think that more power is possible, but at the cost of refinement and reliability.
The i8's design ethos was to keep the car to a very strict low weight limit, to find an acceptable balance of performance from the available power sources. Having worked so hard to keep the car light I imagine that Alpina found there were marginal performance gains in adding power, as each drivetrain component was beefed up to handle the extra demands it's likely to then add weight, which offsets the performance gain...
Will
https://insideevs.com/news/323805/details-on-bmw-i8s-gkn-2-speed-eaxle/
