Electrically-assisted bikes are quite popular in Japan, although the Japanese bike market is so huge they're probably still only a small proportion of the total.
Your concept of what an "e-bike" is seems a bit of out sync with this product. This isn't a scooter, or a scooter-replacement, or something you use for drag-racing with your friends. This is a modest assist for a normal bicycle that helps take the edges off normal bicycling. When you're hauling two kids and a load of groceries up a hill, a little bit of help can be very appealing... but it doesn't have to be a replacement for human effort.
If anything, this product seems to fit in a space beneath existing e-bike designs, which might be more powerful, etc, but exist in far smaller numbers than regular bikes, and so offer far fewer choices as to design, style, quality, etc. By making it possible to just choose a regular bike and "add electricity," they've given the consumer who wants the convenience of an electric assist a huge increase in choice.
Petrol assisted bikes, where a bike is retrofitted with a small 30cc engine, is hugely popular around Buenos Aires. I saw lots of them when I visited recently and they were fairly cheap apparently.
Your concept of what an "e-bike" is seems a bit of out sync with this product. This isn't a scooter, or a scooter-replacement, or something you use for drag-racing with your friends. This is a modest assist for a normal bicycle that helps take the edges off normal bicycling. When you're hauling two kids and a load of groceries up a hill, a little bit of help can be very appealing... but it doesn't have to be a replacement for human effort.
If anything, this product seems to fit in a space beneath existing e-bike designs, which might be more powerful, etc, but exist in far smaller numbers than regular bikes, and so offer far fewer choices as to design, style, quality, etc. By making it possible to just choose a regular bike and "add electricity," they've given the consumer who wants the convenience of an electric assist a huge increase in choice.