Yes and no. So the slow/efficient acceleration is realized today with electric propulsion [0] which is very efficient in terms of fuel consumption because it accelerates the particles to such high speeds. But, it is very low thrust so it is something that is on for days/weeks/months at a time versus the small amount of time that chemical rockets are on. Because it's so low thrust though its not something that will actually generate enough acceleration to get you off the ground in the first place. You will still need a high thrust device (i.e. rocket or something more exotic like SpinLaunch) to get you off the ground and in to a low orbit. So while you wouldn't have to reach escape velocity (11.2 km/s on Earth) you still need to get to a very large fraction of that (6-7 km/s for low-earth orbiting satellites).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_electric_propulsion