I was in Traverse City, MI over the summer with my wife, and we rented a pair of
Raleigh Detours for the day to try out ebikes. I'm sure different ebikes must have different pedal assist profiles or whatever, but this bike had 4 or 5 pedal assist settings and that was basically how fast you could go. On the highest setting I could go about 18 mph if I just lightly turned the pedals with very little effort or around 19 if I pedaled as hard as I could. Same thing just a little slower at all the other settings. Seemed a lot more like a moped than a bike to me, except way crappier than both. If I wanted to commute to work on a moped, I would buy a vespa, and commuting is really the only relevant use-case I can think of for a pedal assist ebike for able-bodied people. Originally we thought that maybe we could get my wife an ebike so she could go cycling with me, but at least with this ebike, she wouldn't be able to keep up and would run out of power in about 25 miles, so pretty useless for that application. More speed, bigger battery, etc. gets us even more into moped-land which isn't really the point.