Any difference in perceived efficiency is a result of variability in the rider’s input on different rides and mostly how much the motor is actually outputting.
Agree with this, there are so many variables at play on any given ride, it’s why you end up with different battery % left after the exact same ride on the same bike, just on different days and different conditions.
Even where there has been a great deal of effort to try and control the variables in some group tests (same rider/same effort/same tyres etc) the results show you could ‘throw a blanket’ over them as they’re all relatively close.
People will often quote route/ride times as evidence that it ‘used the same energy but did it faster’ so must be more efficient right, but again you’re measuring something else there and not efficiency.
People ride bikes for all sorts of reasons, but I don’t think there are many who go out there to try and use less battery than anybody else. To try and eke out a battery to finish a ride, yes, but as unpleasant as it might be on some e-bikes there’s always the option of pedalling!
There will always be people who make the edge cases though, which is fine, but doesn’t mean it applies to the rest of us.

