Yeah, e-bikes seem to be a rather different deal in different countries in practice. The way the legislation sees e-bikes here is that the motor should be for

Yeah, e-bikes seem to be a rather different deal in different countries in practice. The way the legislation sees e-bikes here is that the motor should be for assistance and comfort, and to enable somewhat longer commutes etc., not for being able to go at speeds of motorized traffic. (You can also go faster than 25 on an e-bike, just like you could on any bike, but it has to be on human power.) 25 km/h is IMO a reasonable maximum powered speed in urban bicycle traffic. It's a speed you can reasonably reach on a traditional urban bike by just pedalling, so it's not wildly above the speeds of other bikes in the same traffic, but it's high enough to be useful in a city environment. I can imagine that somewhat higher powered speeds would be nice to have when riding in car traffic, or on roads or paths outside of urban areas where you might ride much faster than that on road bikes. As a compromise it's fairly reasonable from my city-dwelling point of view, though. The legislation here probably wanted to prevent exactly the kind of a mess you'd get from having what are effectively motorized vehicles running on sidewalks and other paths that are explicitly not meant for motorized vehicles.