It does depend where you live, and what it is used for.
Around 18 years ago my mother bought me a mountain bike from
Halfords, very cheap, and heavy, but it was the first time I had ridden a bike with suspension for years, I remember as a kid one was made (Moulton), but never rode it any distance. Well I used the bike as a road bike, well also canal tow paths, but one thing impressed me, was how it went over pot holes in the road.
After realising how much safer the bike with suspension was I would want suspension at least on front wheel, and with the extra speed I get with an e-bike even more important that it is stable when it hits a pot hole. But to be fair this is because Powis council are not very good at filling them, well neither was Flintshire where I lived before.
If I lived some where with good roads, then the super light bike without suspension would be likely better.
A human can produce around 150 to 350 watts of power, and how fast also will depend on weight and hills, and we don't see racing cyclists or runners who are over weight so power to weight ratio means there is an ideal size of human to get high speed. So around the 12 to 14 stone person will be able to cycle at a reasonable speed, and add a 250 watt motor as well then either double speed or they take it easy.
Clearly down hill the motor does nothing, I did live in North Wales near Mold, (Bryn-y-baal) and mother lived in Shotton, only around 6 miles on shortest route, but she lived sea level and I lived around 170 meters higher, so going to Mothers took around 20 minutes, returning for me took around 100 minutes, I tried once with e-bike and it was 40 minutes for the return, the main advantage was at no point did I need to push the e-bike, on shortest route did need to get off and walk with standard bike, so tended to take slightly longer route that I could ride.
However point is up hill the e-bike is matching ones own power, so approx one has double the power. And this means we are going faster, so as with the moped before the e-bike, standard brakes, and suspension is really not good enough, the Raleigh MR6 was a dangerous moped with no suspension and push bike brakes, the Honda P50 had drum brakes and front suspension, and was far safer. Both were too heavy to ride without the motor, I had a P50 and gearing gave around 4 MPH max speed peddling, unlike the e-bike where you can actually use them without the motor.
The Honda P50 was 900 watt, top speed 25 MPH, we can get the same out of a 350 watt electric hub motor, I would guess all down to weight, 45 kg compared with 24 kg for a 350 watt electric bike, can't find weight for Raleigh moped.
However this is clearly where the Gtech wins, 18 kg is very light for an e-bike, but again it is total weight so at 140 kg for me and 24 for bike total 164 kg compared with 158 kg with Gtech not much of a gain, but for a 14 stone person, (89 kg) a 113 kg to 107 kg is a bigger percentage, and so a 14 stone person is going to find the weight reduction far more of an advantage to the 22 stone person. I would need at my weight a 400 watt motor to give me the same assistance to a 14 stone person with a 250 watt motor.
