A friend of mine in the voluntary (but well trained and prepared) Alpine rescue community has told me that an increasing number of teams are using ebikes with success. In some cases it is an official bike, but more often a personal bike.

I have found little official to support it. An Austrian example in German.

Some discussion here and there in English.

Informally so far the ebike mostly excelled at:

a) Getting speedily over narrow trails to a person in distress with considerable equipment and less effort.

b) Searching trails for missing persons or bringing manpower quickly in position for search and rescue operations.

In both instances information is obtained more rapidly and help given more quickly.

So basically in some key situations an ebike accelerates the speed of the mountain rescue action and allows a smarter use of other more costly resources. Needless to add that it is a new tool and does not directly replace other ones but augments them.

Firn