On a cargo bike carrying children in a hilly area the throttle is nearly essentially to safely get going from a stop and then to have pedaling take over.

I don't understand this comment. There are tons of non e cargo bikes. Are you saying they're unsafe to use? You could simply walk the bike if the terrain is too steep.

There’s a reason why heavy cargo bikes originated in flat places like Christiania, and the Netherlands. Walking a Larry vs. Harry Bullit up a steep hill is hard enough empty, but with 3 kids and groceries in the bucket I can see a lot of people preferring an assist.

It can be much harder to ride those cargo bikes by pedaling and throwing your center of balance around when weighed down compared to allowing the motor to accelerate you while keeping the bike properly balanced.

Speaking of gatekeeping...

A lot of people, adults in particular, appear to have an aversion to riding bicycles due to their inability to place both feet on the ground while seated (and I'm speaking here about the standard bicycle geometry, not recumbents, etc.).

It's too bad too because you would love to get more people out of large steel cars and into efficient e-bikes/scooters.

I wish we could lighten up a bit with regard to requiring pedals/pedalling and try saving the planet a little.

Absolutely agree, harping on the specific form of the vehicle rather than just enforcing reasonable safe speed limits for paths that everyone has to follow is maddening. I don't care if someone is more comfortable on a standup scooter, a pedal bike, a recumbent, or even a segway. Just lower the barrier of entry and get more people out and not in their cars.

Not really, without the pedals it's no longer a bicycle but a moped. We have e-mopeds already and there are plenty of rules for those.

Your views are colored by the laws you have dealt with, as are mine. Just because that is the law near you doesn't automatically mean that is the ideal way of regulating society. It is just what you are used to.

Obviously, I am arguing from the position of legality where I live, that would seem logical (as the writer of the article). If you live somewhere else and have a different legal environment I'd be very interested to learn about it but I won't adapt my behavior based on that because it simply doesn't apply here.

They're not asking you to change behavior. The claim was that forcing people to pedal is gatekeeping without an actual reason, which is separate from legal arguments, and saying "the reason is the law" is missing the point/circular.

I just twigged from this thread that “moped” is motor+pedal.

Now I’m annoyed that in the UK we use “moped” for Vespa style scooters which have no pedals.

(I was already mildly annoyed that we use “scooter” for Vespa style vehicles which you sit on and are entirely motorised, when it really describes the variant skateboard with handlebars you stand on using one foot and ‘scoot’ along using the other foot for propulsion).

Yes, scooter is heavily overloaded. I had that problem recently when writing a report and realized that there are actually three different classes of vehicle and they're all called scooters.