I don't think what the prime mover is, whether it's an electric motor or a combustion engine, matters so much (yes the toque is very different). I think the strategy, transmission, and tires matter far more. A fair comparison might be to ask whether a Chevy Spark would have a better time in the snow than a Spark EV under the same conditions.
I think it comes down to what your stuck strategy is, and how the car's shifting and traction control works.
I've driven in the snow a lot with my previous manual transmission Chevy Cobalt with winters, and have gotten stuck in a few instances. I've learned in those situations to rock the car with quick shifts from 1st to reverse, just as you would build momentum on a swing.
It's so much easier to do this with an electric powertrain and a straight shifter.
You don't need to take your foot off the accelerator pedal to shift. Unlike a manual transmission that will grind its gears without disengaging the clutch, or an automatic that has some lag to build hydraulic pressure, the Spark EV's driveline is just a planetary and differential gearset, and the motor inverter has no moving parts besides the shifter gear selector cable running between the cabin and the engine. You effectively have an entirely new world of control to rock with, and without the need to rifle through a checklist of action steps between clutch, accelerator, and shifter.
The only thing to watch out for in the Spark EV is just how far you're holding your accelerator pedal, as shifting in motion induces stronger than usual impulse stresses in the gears from the sudden change in direction. You'd know what I'm talking about if you've ever tried shifting to N then back to D with the pedal still depressed. You feel a sudden jerk from the instant torque that the software would normally smooth out.
Feathering the pedal just above its resting position and no further ensures you limit the change in torque and don't cause massive unnecessary stresses in the driveline.
Absolutely! That instant torque can be a double-edged sword in the snow.
GM missed out on implementing the opposite of a sport mode in the ECU software. Rather than aggressively mapping the pedals, a more spread-out and insensitive mode for wintery conditions would alleviate a lot of driver attention to foot pressure. They could have simply programmed sport mode to be held down for 5 seconds to enable something like that.
There is one way to unlock this as a workaround:
Keep an OBD tool in the car. Find a clearable ECU error code that is easy to cause that will maintain a limp mode / Propulsion Power Reduced over the course of your drive. There are a few ideas I have, such as bringing a magnet to the battery coolant level reservoir to throw a HPCM2 code, jiggle communication wires, or generate electrical noise to momentarily interrupt communincation to the ECU (while parked at the start of a drive, of course). A piezoelectric igniter from a bbq lighter could induce some noise if done at the right location.
This would give very insensitive torque-pedal control to make snow-driving entirely gentle and gradual. To disable it, the car just needs a restart, or OBD fault code clearing.
