While the e-bike polarises debate in mountain biking, a single visit to a UK trail centre riding one and you’ll never go back to the pedal and push life. However, with road bikes, there hasn't really been an e-bike system available that doesn’t just result in a heavy bike when it’s not being useful in e-bike mode, slowing the adoption by ‘real road riders’ as a result.
It's the hardware that's really the problem here, given that when you hit the limit, the motor stops assisting, and when not working for you, it essentially works against you. You can feel both the excess weight in the system, and resistance from the system itself, defeating the object somewhat.
