It definitely is, and there are several ways in which it's achievable, including the way you describe which could easily be implemented.
The reasons it isn't done are not in any way technological though, and are due to the small e-bike market and where most of them are made, and here's some of them:
1) The Chinese are notoriously slow cadence leisurely cyclists, and I'm assured they also avoid cycling up hills and don't understand our obsession with doing that. Therefore they have no interest in doing it for their large home market, the overseas sales being peanuts in comparison and not warranting investment.
2) The Japanese legal restrictions I mention in my article extend to cycling law in general. In many areas bikes are restricted to shared use pavements and not allowed on the roads, with speed strictly limited to 8 mph. In other circumstances speeds are restricted to other degrees, and that's reflected in their view that sports riders travel at 15 mph as I mentioned in the article. So once again there is no home market need.
3) The only impetus for a different design would have to come from outside of the Orient, but once again the small size of the whole e-bike market prevents investment, and that's especially true for a bike that would appeal only to a very restricted sector of that tiny market.
4) High quality systems like the Pansonic one require a huge investment, well beyond viability, and with the evidence of the world's largest cycle firm failing with their Lafree series still fresh in the mind, no-one else is going to be willing to take such a large risk. The only viable way for the present is to use the Panasonic standard system with the odd tweak as five manufacturers have done using six names.
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