An automobile ICE engine, by design, has to be spinning to make torque. It has to suck in air, compress it, and expel it, and it's not going to do that at 0 RPM. It's not going to do it at 10 RPM either, or even 100 unless it's some huge marine engine. Remember, a piston only makes power 25% of the time, and this power has to pay for the remaining strokes, including compression, which slows it WAY down. So in general, it has to spin at a decent speed to make enough power to be able to even pay for itself. Once it gets there, it has to spin faster to make extra power, and even faster to make the kind of power you want. Depending on design, you'll usually end up being in the thousands of RPM before you get there...
Electric motors, on the other hand...they're just some wires and magnets. You run a current through a wire and it becomes a magnet, which pushes against another magnet and vuoila! you've got force (torque).
The more current you supply, the more torque. I'm guessing the greatest current usually runs at 0rpm, since there's practically no resistance in the wires. Once the motor starts spinning, the moving magnetic field resists the current, and slows it down.
That's my layman's explanation of it, it's extremely simple and obviously will differ as there are many ways to make electric motors, and it may not even be 100% correct...in which case I invite someone to correct me.