I'm just advocating simplicity for urban mobility. I understand technical crawling up a 10% incline mtn trail at 3-5mph is best served via a torque-based PAS but I think the merits of PAS really goes down for urban mobility. When I'm commuting something like 75% of my time may be on straight roads with moderate slopes so my speed may vary from 15-25mph but it sure seems easy to keep the assist where my effort is where I want it to be (without a programming guess).
I really think that just the fact that PAS doesn't really account for rider weight or real world leg power of different riders the assist estimate can be pretty far off what the different riders may want. I understand the superman-like feeling when on a PAS ebike - that's a smile generator that is well leveraged by the marketing types but is it really a better solution than a throttle on an urban mobility ebike. I simply do not think so.
One last comment on this. My guess is that if all the big brand ebikes came with throttle only standard configuration and a rider had to pay the extra cost for the PAS if they wanted it, it would not be a very popular upgrade. The fact that the EU ebike regulations were regulatory captured to
not allow throttles, most of the big brands just ship to the US what is sold in Europe and then market people that they really don't want a throttle. So who is really saying people are not entitled to their preference - the company names are Trek, Specialized, R&M, Stromer, Haibike, Giant, etc. They could provide a throttle for US market and even push for regulatory change in the EU (oh but I forgot Bosch, Brose, and Yamaha have more business with internal combustion motors so they want ebikes to remain recreational).
SAY NO TO PAS!!