and sort of ignores the fact that there are you know derailleur gears to cope with hills
...which works, but can be incompatible with getting where you're going in a reasonable amount of time, if there's significant distance between points A and B.
Switching from a car to an electric bike did my health a huge amount of good commuting from Austin to Round Rock -- a 30-minute drive was a 50 minute assisted bike ride (acceptable), or a 90 minute unassisted bike ride each way (not always acceptable). Getting that 100 minutes of pedaling in each day (both directions) improved my health enough that in six months I was able to do the same commute on an unassisted bike on those days when I had three hours to spare. I don't see how that's anything but win.
As an aside -- my strongly preferred variety of e-bike is mid-drive, with the motor's power going through the chain, so you're still shifting. A really well-designed system such as that from Optibike is tuned such that the motor is only in its optimal efficiency band if you're pedalling alongside it -- one gets more assistance from an Opti if maintaining a constant 80-100rpm cadence, which is a good place to be in from a cardio perspective regardless.