I'll be honest, if I could afford a nice electric road bike I would get one. Not necessarily because I need it all the time, but it'd let me push a bit further knowing that if I run out of energy and I'm still 20 miles from civilization, or I hit a hill I'm not up to, that I can just turn on the motor and get some help. It'd probably allow me to take longer and harder routes even if I rarely actually used the motor.
Is it cheating? Who cares?