The problem isn't elegance (by which I assume they mean style. Bicycles have been refined over 150 years, and are VERY elegant when it comes to their mechanical design, provided you're not shopping at Wallyworld or the very bottom of the market. NEVER buy a "big box" store bike, for a ton of reasons.) People ride all sorts of bikes. The problem is safety (the number one concern people have is fear of being hurt by drivers. Nobody answers "why aren't you biking?" with "oh, if only the bikes looked better"), infrastructure (on many levels, ranging from traffic sensors that detect bikes, to intersections and roads designed to accommodate more than just motor vehicles, to secure lockups, to being able to take a bicycle on other transit systems, etc...this is slowly starting to change), and societal attitudes. Namely that bicycles are toys, not serious transportation, and thus should not be accomodated...which is a bit circular...and a lot of attitudes and bias that should seem oddly familiar to anyone who has studied gender and racial bias. There's a great article out there from a psych magazine noting that cyclists are treated like any other minority outgroup. For example, emphasis of negative attributes, assumption of guilt, harassment and violence against them, etc.
Which is why so many cyclists now use helmet cameras to record their travels; it's to document the harassment (because people claim it doesn't happen, when it does), but also to have evidence if you're hit, because the driver is going to claim "I didn't see them" and they were doing nothing wrong, witnesses are going to think you were "flying" even if you were well below the speed limit, etc. There's a famous case of a DC cyclist who was cut off; the driver and two witnesses claimed he ran a red light. Surprise! Traffic camera video shows the light was green, and continued to be green as he lay on the ground unconscious after having slammed into the side of the car that had just cut him off. I generally find that drivers have far less understanding of the basic rules of the road and what cyclists are allowed to do or aren't, which is ironic, given that they're the ones piloting the massive machine that can (and does, to the tune of 40,000 a year in the US alone) kill people.
We live in a country where we had a network of well-maintained roads, which were the result of cycling clubs petitioning the government for roads that were rideable. Bicycling was HUGE in the late 1800's; it even factored into women's rights, believe it or not. Then the motor car came along. And people were horrified at the deaths and injuries; speed limits were imposed. The automobile industry panicked; customers wanted to go fast, unimpeded. So they fought back with a campaign of ridiculing pedestrians and cyclists. As the automobile became a symbol of success and achievement, suddenly if you had a car you were the elite, and if you were on foot or on a bicycle, you were not. You were poor, or stupid, or whathaveyou. And the American Dream became driving a car to your suburban house which was nowhere near the market, post office, bus stop, train station, your office, etc. We've only just started to slowly realize the idiocy of this and do more mixed zoning and transit-oriented development.
Just as it became the fault of the "jaywalker" for daring to step into the street except where specifically allowed to, suddenly it became the fault of cyclists when motorists plowed into them. We expect someone operating a power saw or a gun to be careful around others...but put them in a car, and suddenly we expect everyone else to be careful of them. And to protect themselves against you by dressing in foam hats and clothing that makes them look like traffic cones with all sort of blinking lights. Drivers can spot a 2 foot pothole, but can't spot a 6 foot tall, 3 foot wide object in the road? Riiiiiight....
This attitude spread in many places, except for the Netherlands, for example, where the car came relatively late...and Dutch society revolted after the skyrocketing injuries and deaths, particularly of children (children also represent a very disproportionate number of deaths in the US to this day.) That's why you have an assumption of guilt, until proven innocent, for drivers if they hit a cyclist or pedestrian (if witnesses saw the cyclist do something illegal, or you have a dashcam, or so on, then yes, the driver isn't at fault. It's not condition-less.)
Right now drivers have zero impetus to behave. If you crash, you're protected by an amazing collection of active and passive safety devices; no physical danger. Insurance means there's no financial risk to them, and current US law means you practically have to scream, in front of witnesses, "DIE!" when you hit someone in order to be charged or certainly convicted...so no fear of criminal punishment. DUI is almost a joke; something like a million people a year regularly drunk-drive, and even when convicted, have their license revoked...they keep right on drunk-driving. But insurance money doesn't undo the injuries, pain, suffering, disabilities, and death that can result of the people you hit, particularly if they're not in a car, which is why injuries per mile are dropping for passengers of motor vehicles, but climbing for everyone else (peds and cyclists.)
Also: electric bikes generally solve a problem that doesn't exist. Bicycling is the most energy-efficient way to move, which means you don't need much energy in the first place. If you don't get any other form of regular cardio exercise (by which I mean by a few hours a week), yeah, the first week or two is gonna suck a bit, but it gets better quickly; the human body is amazing at adaptation. And if you take it easy. you don't sweat like crazy (this is the other big "fear" people have) and you won't burn yourself out.
By and large, electric bikes are heavy, less reliable, and more expensive. That's their problem...