"Ride it, and then tell me that."

In my experience, the people who are the most stridently anti-ebike have never even been on one. Kind of like a little kid who says "I hate that" when mom cooks a new recipe for dinner ... "how do you know you hate it, you've never tasted it before?" ... "well, Mommy, I just know I am going to hate it!"

Then, there is science. Nothing like actual data to show someone. I know that I don't work as hard at any given time on an e-bike as I would on a non-motorized bike, and I definitely work a lot less hard on big hills, but I also tend to ride farther, which evens out the total calories my body has burned by the end of the ride. If you wear a fitness watch that tracks calories based on your heartbeat during your workouts, you also could show your data to the naysayers, and point out to them that time on the e-bike won't burn as many calories as the same time riding a bike without any mechanical assistance, but for any given length of workout, the calories expended riding the ebike are still going to be significantly higher than the calories spent doing the same length workout of many, many other types of workouts. And, if you end up riding farther, you're probably burning just as many total calories by the end of the ride. At least that is what my fitness watch tells me - not as many calories burnt per unit of time or per unit of distance as riding a non-ebike, but I tend to ride farther, and even if I don't ride father than on my non-motorized bike, I still burn more calories than I would at some other types of workouts that I could spend my time doing at the gym.

E-bikes are too new, and there are too many variables, to quantify the way this chart does, but notice that the numbers for cycling are higher than a lot of exercises that are perceived as being moderate to difficult in exertion level. Even with some mechanical assist, you're definitely burning calories at a pretty high rate while riding an e-bike, unless you ride exclusively in throttle-only or maximum assist modes.

https://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist.htm