It's not just rural, but most smaller cities (usually less than 1MM people) that don't have great public transport connection with the extended zones that have developed around them for industry and living, where personal car ownership is the norm if you don't want to commute 2h+ via public transport.
Not every EU city has the public transport of Vienna and London, nor the cycling infrastructure of Netherlands and Copenhagen. And a lot of Americans miss this as they just look at the model cities where it's all perfect, but those are like what, 10%-20% of the EU.
