Electric assist bicycles are basically a smaller / lightweight alternative to scooters; I don't see (but I could be wrong) how e-bikes would be more prevalent if scooters already aren't.

Scooters have become quite a bit more prevalent in recent years. Actually there was a link to this article at the bottom of TFA: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/27/17676670/electric-scooter-rent... .

Edit: Huh, I hadn't read the article yet; it appears not to be about moped-/motorcycle-like scooters as I expected (because there has been an increase in such scooters in the Netherlands in the last five to ten years or so), but about electrified kick scooters. (Dutch uses different words for each (scooter and step), so I had no idea about the double meaning.)

Ebikes have become very popular in the Netherlands among the elderly. They're used to cycling but find the effort of a conventional bike harder as they get older.

Incidentally the one age group in the Netherlands with an increase in road deaths in recent years has been 65+. That's largely attributed to them using Ebikes to travel much faster, while having comparatively slow reaction times and less resilience to injuries sustained in the higher speed crashes.

You can use e-bikes on bike lanes. That makes a huge difference.