The lighter ones that are comfortable to pedal can, just not quickly. Even middleweight ones are reasonable to pedal.
Ironically, when the bikes get more powerful and have bigger batteries, THOSE are the ones that are effectively range-limited, because they're not realistically pedal-able.

But yes, at speed, compare a gBike vs. pedal-able eBike and the gBike will get there faster.

It's about picking one's poison.