TimG.. I had trouble enough when faced with dog leg first gear selection on a 60`s Porsche let alone that which you describe might be necessary to operate a model T...
As for your number of gears question.... It seems electric vehicles have little need of numerous gears so perhaps as ever we end up back where we started... according to the interweb an EV held the land speed record up till 1900 and Pope manufactured an interesting EV way back when, I think Jay Leno drove one in one of his vids..?
