Not necessarily. Some cities still have fairly bad public transport. Using the car just happens to be worse.
See here for numbers: https://dollarsandsense.sg/complete-guide-buying-car-singapo...
Their example car worth 50'000S$ (~36'000 USD) will end up costing 160'000S$ (116'000 USD) total.
Singapore is expensive because of the additional taxes that get added on to the base price. From what people (on HN in fact) have told me most Scandinavian countries levy significant extra taxes on car purchases.
So the $40k car might actually only be $15 to 20k in other countries such as Germany and Belgium?
The Netherlands: 36,500 Belgium: 35,000 Germany: 37,500 Sweden: 31,000
These may not be exactly comparable feature-wise, but those extra taxes don't seem to have a big impact.