As soon as I saw an electric bike for the first time, I knew that it was a bad invention.
The electric bike is the best way to exercise without getting in better shape, here’s why:
If we own a standard bicycle and ride it, we will need to pedal when the road is perfectly leveled, and when we have to go up a hill. But the intensity will be greater when climbing a hill, because we have to fight against the gravity that wants us to go back down. On an electric bike, we will also have to pedal on a leveled road and when climbing a hill, but both at the same intensity. This is where the problem comes, we never have to make more efforts to adjust to the difficulty of the road, we just have to keep a steady rhythm and everything will be fine.
What makes us in shape is getting our body out of its comfort zone, so that it has to adapt by making our muscles stronger and more enduring, and by doing the same thing with our heart (cardio-vascular endurance). But if we keep the same rhythm from start to finish because the bike is doing half of the work for us, then we could just be walking and we would be getting the same results, which are nonexistent.
In a way, we are tricking yourself into thinking that we are exercising, without actually doing the work. You know those people who get off their bike to walk beside it as soon as they see a hill, then riding an electric is basically the same thing while still sitting on the bike.
As much as I hate the very concept of it, I can still perceive some utility out of this thing. For example, even though I have never seen it in application where I live, it seems that some people deliver stuff on bike, so for these people who already put in their fair share of effort, such bicycle would be more than welcomed by their joints. Another good use would be for someone who is recovering from an injury, for which a standard bike would put too much stress on the body.
So this kind of bike has its use, although I would personally consider it a marginal/specialized product, for very particular uses and cases where the good old bicycle would be too much. Other then that, sweating and feeling discomfort is part of the experience, if we are not having them while riding our bike, then we are not getting better, we are just stagnating.