Effective August 2, 2020 - NYS law will allow people to operate bicycles with electric assist (e-bikes) and electric scooters (e-scooters) on some streets and highways in New York State. E-bikes have an electric motor and operable pedals.

You can operate e-bikes where there is a posted speed limit of 30 MPH or less. Municipalities can further regulate e-bikes or e-scooters.

Paraphrased from NYS DMV page, which has additional details and definitions of e-bikes and e-scooters.

Learn more about New York's Micromobility Law by Peter W. Martin, Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law, Emeritus.

Car and Driver magazine has a great on-line article on the history of electric vehicles, from the first carriages built in the early 1800s to the first commercially available EV (the 1890s "Electrobat"), all the way up to the second-generation Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model 3. (It was published March 2018, so doesn't go past there.)