@JayVee
Age 55 5' 10" 190 lbs. fitness much better than most my age as well as some of the younger guys that work for me. Mount Washington Valley NH is filled with hills most 3-9% grades but there are many stretches over 10%. Just the hill heading up to my house is a 13% grade several hundred yards long with a slower gradual 5-7% climb prior to for a half mile or so. Paved roads mostly 12-mile round trip. Weekend riding would be paved roads in the area with the same type of terrain.
You're already a cyclist so you may have thought about all of this, but here goes:
With those hills, I'd look very carefully at the torque specs in Court's reviews of the bikes you are interested in. The more nm's of torque, the better.
That being said, I would also either get a bike with a good size granny gear on the rear hub (42 tooth?) and maybe no more than a 40 tooth chainring. You might have to be ready to change the chainring in order to get the bike you want. The Juiced Bikes, for instance, are optimized for speed and have a 52 tooth chainring. Not so good for pedaling up those kinds of hills, but if you like the CCS, then change out the sprocket.
No matter what bike you get, you're going to have to use the pedals on those hills. For a guy in the kind of shape you're in, no problem. You will still get pedal assist, it's not like it cuts off at a certain % of grade LOL. You'll just have to do more of the work on steeper hills.
Maybe look at bikes with enough room to put on a 2 sprocket crankset. A nice size cruising sprocket and a teeny one for the granny gear. The bike I have is the Juiced Bikes CCS, and it's pretty tight in there. No room for 2 sprockets. Perhaps other brands would have room for 2 chainrings, I just don't know. Just thinking out loud here boss.
