It's important to consider cost/value holistically instead of just the upfront dollar amount. $1500~ for a cargo ebike is an intimidating number that I wouldn't have imagined paying for a bike five years ago. It's replacing a car which costs me $1500~ per year in registration and insurance premiums. My yearly fuel costs on the bike are less than refueling my car once, and I was doing that biweekly. Any repair on my bike is a few hundred dollars at most, doable at home without expensive tools, while repairing the fender on my car cost $2000 and spiked the insurance rate. I never need to take a taxi or use our inefficient public transit, and the time I spend on it is really fun because the motor cuts out all the shitty parts of biking. It's inexpensive in the larger sense that it makes travel time rewarding instead of passive or punishing, on top of the boots theory of poverty where my cheap car becomes expensive when I have to actually use it and then replace all the shit on it. My ebike is inexpensive because it makes the rest of my life inexpensive and gives me my time back.