If it's an electric bike, one might care a lot less than on a bike that runs on meat power only. You may consider the battery to be the primary energy source, and pedal power a supplement.
Which works until you are out of battery, and then you have a lot of extra weight to carry uphill with greatly reduced peddling efficiency. At that point why not just have an e-bike with no peddling at all? Saves weight, battery lasts longer, can still walk it up hills.
You don't worry about being out of battery on a Tesla, so why would you on an e-bike? Clearly you need to fit the drivetrain to the expected use case, but there are plenty of people who might ride the bicycle down the street to the grocerist, but would never even consider going on a ride lasting more than half an hour.
In some places, the pedals hold legal weight to mark it as an "e-bike" (legal) as opposed to a "motorcycle" (illegal without appropriate license, registration, insurance, tax, inspection etc).
