What you are seeing is the motor which is an AC motor. The center of it is a simple gearbox. Because an electric motor can be throttled and can run up to a speed far beyond what a gasoline driven engine can run, there doesn't need to be a transmission. Then to the other side is a three phase tri-pole inverter which converts the DC battery power into AC power to run the motor. (You may have a something similar which you use to power a laptop or other A/C using devices in your vehicle, but this one is on a whole different scale.) This How it's Made Dream Cars episode (S02E10) explains how everything is put together.
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