Hi Chris.
Yes I also considered getting an e bike after I got my new enduro bike end of last year. I really see the appeal of an e bike. I went riding with someone in October - I was on my hard tail and he was on his e bike. 3.5 hrs later I was absolutely ruined and he was fresh as a daisy lol.
I already live quite up in the mountains and I would only go up from my place with a regular bike never down into the valley and up on the other side because I could never get back home again. But with the e-mtb, I can (almost) go wherever I want and have some reserve to get back up home again.
I don't have the e-mtb to go with regular riders and be fresh like a daisy. Going with regular bike riders, I drive on the lowest support (compensating the more weight of the e-mtb) as long as I can.
The beauty of the e-mtb is that I can have it both ways.
I can kill myself with low support when riding with others or kill myself when I go alone with limited time after work, when it gets dark earlier, then I use more support and still go all out to make quite a lot of kilometers uphill before it gets dark.
Or I can drive to work (almost) without breaking a sweat.
For me, where I live, the e-mtb was the only realistic possibility to get back on the bike again and I enjoy it vastly.
When the weather is ok (except during Winter), I normaly go on the e-mtb 3 to 5 times per week most of the time for around 2 hours and the fitter I get, the less support I use and the bigger my radius for tours gets.
And I can sometimes even convince my wife to tag along with her e-mtb, she going high support while I use low support uphill. She drives down the same gravel tracks we took uphill, I drive down on single trails through the woods. Work out for both of us and we get to spend time together.
By the end of each season, she also drives single trails with me where she dares to and walks where she feels uncomfortable. I guess I have her hooked