Elon talked during some event how the latency / response time of the torque control in the Tesla drive-train is ridiculous compared to gasoline and for that reason even RWD models should handle well in the snow. To be fair, some people talk about the (at least older) RWD models being a bit crazy on Snow/Ice. I can only assume that the newer models are much better and the Roadster likely better again - plus it's actually AWD but anyway the point was more about the torque control :)
By comparison one of the kings of Launch Control is well known to be the Nissan GT-R. You can see in this wet launch that while it still does a great job, it definitely has some spin as it basically intentionally causes a loss of traction at the start, calculates the traction available based on the acceleration it does get to then adjust the power output and differential splits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTJGE0wzJpE
For other really fun scientific/computerised stability control, this video about the Koenigsegg Agera R is great:
https://youtu.be/SywqgH7n-5g?t=34
It shows him literally reefing the wheel side to side at 1m15s while full throttle. Even my 2009 Evo X has surprisingly good stability management in the wet - and it is now probably nearly 2 decades old technology behind any of these other cars and only a 50k car not a 200k-1m car. Still crazy and computers are amazing.
I'd be pretty nervous running something RWD with massive torque and power on ice. I'm sure it's better to have a more predicateble delivery, but with ice 7 months per year I'm staying clear of high power RWD cars...
The electric advantage though is that you can infinitely (or well close enough) modulate that power delivery. And in fact I think they recently added a "slow and comfortable" acceleration option to the Model S (the opposite of Maximum Plaid :-)
The snow comments were also mostly in regards to the context of the Model 3 which is not that "high power" but it also has obviously quite a substantial amount of torque from a get-go compared to traditional gasoline torque curves.
Generally speaking though I would agree.. I love AWD, Breathe AWD.. and my Model 3 will be AWD :) .. and we don't get any snow!
Also 7 months of snow is probably very different to much less of it I imagine.
