You are missing the obvious alternatives: public transport, cycling, walking.
I'm sitting on an electric suburban train. I don't know where the energy comes from, but there's a lot less needed than any car.
I'm sitting on an electric suburban train. I don't know where the energy comes from, but there's a lot less needed than any car.
Here in America 99% of the time your options are car, or nothing. Public transport either doesn't exist or doesn't go where you need it to if it's even on time. Cycling is dangerous and mostly used as exercise, and walking the distance is just too far.
Would I love to cycle to work? Absolutely. Am I willing to risk my life every day to do so? I don't think so.
The choices you call on as obvious, are just not depending on location. Tell someone in Texas to try cycling, taking the bus, or walking to work and see what their reaction is. Tell someone in Japan and the reaction is much different.
I'm just outside of Washington DC (Northern VA, inside the 'beltway') - a locale that ostensibly has some of the best public transit the US has to offer. My neighborhood is highly walkable - any sort of quotidian essential (grocery, pharmacy, doctors, dentists, dining, library, etc.) is accessible within a ~20 minute walk of my home. But without a car, access to locales outside typical walking range is severely limited by public transit service frequency and coverage.
The shortest public transit route to my suburban office ~8 miles north? 80 minutes one way, including 30 walking minutes, half of which do not include any paved sidewalks. There are no sane or safe bike routes to this location. It is only a ~15 minute commute by car.
My commute to a typical downtown DC office location (Penn Quarter) by public transit alone? 75 minutes one way, again with 30 of it walking. That can be cut to ~50 minutes (inclusive 10 walking) if I drive to the nearest DC Metro station and take the train in, but then I have to rely on a car anyway, and I might as well just do the whole ~35ish minute drive into the city. Taking a bike to the train station would eliminate any time savings, and require dangerous riding on high-ish speed local roads and crossing a busy highway.
The situation isn't going to change without investing incredible sums in infrastructure (which probably won't yield improvement for close to a decade, realistically) and massive changes in local zoning and development policy to promote dense development near suburban transportation hubs (never going to happen with NIMBY attitudes and warring municipal interests).
I don't blame people for driving, when the alternatives suck. We need to push to make those alternatives better. It's a chicken and egg problem.