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Pure electric vehicles, as a promising alternative to conventional fossil fuel–powered passenger vehicles, provide outstanding overall energy-utilizing efficiency by omitting the internal combustion engine. However, because of lower energy density in battery energy storage, the driving range per charge is limited by this electrochemical power source, leading to a so-called range phobia and presenting a major barrier for large-scale commercialization. The widely adopted single-reduction gear in pure electric vehicles typically do not achieve the diverse range of functional needs that are present in multi-speed conventional vehicles, most notably acceleration performance and top speed requirements. Consequently, special-designed multi-speed pure electric vehicle–powertrains have been compared and investigated for these applications in this article. Through the optimizing of multiple gear ratios and creating special shifting strategies, a more diverse range of functional needs is realized without increasing the practical size of the electric motor and battery. This article investigates the performance improvements of pure electric vehicle realized through utilization of multi-speed dual-clutch transmissions and continuously variable transmissions. Results reveal that there can be significant benefits attained for pure electric vehicles through multi-speed transmissions. Simulation results shows that continuously variable transmission and two-speed transmission are the two most promising transmissions for pure electric vehicle in different classes, respectively.