People need cars for various reasons: trips to Home Depot to pick up home gardening gear, taking the kids and their friends to the movies, heading to the park to fly kites, traveling to the local university for graduate classes, travel for work that requires driving for hours to nearby cities. My family has done all of this, and none of it is convenient without a regular (gas or electric) car.
There may be some climates in the USA that allow year round commuting exposed to the elements, say San Diego, but in most of the country this isn’t practical. I’ve lived in places where it got to 13 degrees Fahrenheit below zero and in other places where it has been over 113 degrees above zero. Travel without the protection of a car for a couple of miles under these conditions is difficult.
For these reasons, people feel they need cars and once the sunken cost of such an investment is made it makes less sense to use public transportation or scooters. Someday, in the distant future, perhaps cities will have better, cleaner, safer, and more convenient public transportation and then the equation may change, but once you have a car in the garage already it’s often the easiest choice and having a Tesla might lessen the environmental impact.