Interesting in which part of Europe are you living to make such a statement for the bit of luxury. The only country I could think of is the Netherlands and probably Belgium.
You may not need car daily, but you definitely need it at least weekly.
I am not working in trades, don't live rural and I dont have kids. In that case I would get an electric bike. The rest I do. Heck, I have transported my SUP and a week of resources over 4km of rural road to get around rapids in a Swedish National Park. In one go in an hour because it was getting close to sun set and I had fallen in at the rapid before. My partner would like me less if I had a car.
As far as I know the closest city with public transport counts 100k residents, but there are 60 smaller towns in my province alone.
People forget that European history before cars has lead to so many small accessible paths that simply do not exist in many American or Australian places. I know what rural Europe looks like. But you seem to have no idea what rural on other continents looks like.
You have to be quite central in quite a big city to not need a car. But that does cover quite a lot of people - I would say much of the population of London and the most central bits of Manchester and Birmingham, which is easily 10-20m people.
Because i don't live in a big city (and i would dread to) the 10km commute to work is either
1) 15-25 min by car
2) 25-30 min by bike
3) 40-60 min by public transport, with at least one change
And i'm lucky as we recently moved the office to be a good 4km nearer from my home. That was further out requiring 25min by car, and aobut 1h30min by public transport with at least two changes.
Also if i want to do anything beside going in my backyard on my free time, car is a necessity.