I guess instead of answering your first three questions, I’ll say this:

Our world would be better without being completely dependent on cars. You can see this in a few select cities or neighborhoods that have avoided the worst of car dependency. There are still suburbs, but they’re a bit more dense and you can easily bike to a grocery store in 10 minutes. There are still rural suburbs, but it’s much more expensive to live there due to the extra effort to get where you need to go.

There isn’t an easy way back since we let the auto industry have such a huge influence in politics, they’ve shaped the world, and it would take us decades and a LOT of money to revert the damage. We can still make steps.

HOWEVER, to bring the point back, we’re still in the 1910’s auto industry with AI. Are we going to let the AI industry get heavily involved in politics and shape our world into a worse one to benefit them? We’re at a point where we can reap the benefits, like with early cars, without the damage that came later