Very much so. My heart rate readings are basically the same as on my road bike but I’m making the trip with ~100 pounds of kid & cargo.

I’ve seen a few studies supporting this in general: people ride with the same intensity but go further or get there faster.

There’s a really key benefit which is less obvious: e-bikes remove disincentives. Everyone I know who bought one rides more because they don’t have to worry about that one big hill, or the spot where you need to be on a road & going <20 mph triggers driver aggression, or you can carry your heavier groceries home, etc.

Oh for sure. What people don't realize is how high the "whee!" factor is on an ebike. You're gonna be wanting to go fast automatically and near the bikes top speed the assistance gently tapers off. You'll balance at a speed where the amount of work you're doing is reasonable. You'll cycle much farther than otherwise because if your legs give in you can always cruise home at a slightly lower speed.

It's probably the best invention in transport since the car. Remember all the hype for the segway how it'd be the new mode of transport? all that applies to electric bicycles.

why wouldn't it be? you can still pedal and lower the assistance. personally I find using an ebike with low assistance to be more difficult than a regular, light road bike

It objectively is, yes.

The objective part being the heart rate monitor on my watch. I routinely get into the 130-145 range.

Or sometimes not! The throttle is not labor intensive. But that gets boring.

I'm surprised about the down votes, I'm similarly curious. I bike a lot, and occasionally take a bikeshare e bike, and the difference is night and day. Yes, I'm moving my legs in the bike pedaling motion, but it in a way that feels like it exclusively is just a different input mechanism for the motor.

I wonder if there is a large spectrum of power in e bikes, and that bikeshare e bikes are at one end of that spectrum.

Depends on the e-bike and the riding behaviour, naturally.

If you simply use the assist to go faster but otherwise put in the same effort, then it's exercise. And if you enjoy the speed and it's convenient to travel more or even switch out car trips, it gets extra points. But if you simply take the same amount of trips, spend less time due to the extra speed, and mostly cycle on full pedal-assist (there's ebikes that are simply electric motorbikes with pedals) then no, it wouldn't be exercise.

Yes. Try riding one and it’s self-evident that it is. (Unless it has a throttle and you’re using that the whole time, but if your goal is exercise don’t do that!)

There's some evidence that ebike riders get more exercise than regular bike riders, https://electrek.co/2019/08/11/electric-bike-riders-more-exe...

It depends on the bicycle. Some of them, at the right assistance level, the rider still pedals enough to be in light cardio range, which provides huge health benefits. Other ebikes, not so much.

Either this is a flippant response or you've never been on an ebike. They are not motorcycles and require effort from the rider. The effort can be as minimal or as strenuous as you desire. If you measure by duration the effort is the same. If you measure by speed than one may exercise less overall but folks tend to make more ebike trips so there could be an offset there.

It is ridiculous to question if there is any effort expended.

You can pick the torque you want for less or more assistance, and it stops at 25Km/h anyway.

I remember going to a talk by a cardiologist who said he told patients to take the bicycle and sometimes they'd come back with a worse heart. Then it would turn out that those patients thought an electric bicycle is good too, since it looks like a bicycle and you have to use the pedals like a bicycle. But since you don't really exert yourself it doesn't help the heart. That was maybe 10 years ago, so electric bicycles were not so ubiquitous back then.