Yes, which is why it is a tragedy that we have built an environment in which it is straight up dangerous to walk or bike because of cars.
They do: walking. Even ebikes keeps you dependent on electricity. Bicycles keep you dependent on consumables for maintenance (oil, etc.) and spare parts suppliers.
I bicycle as my primary transportation, and I have to admit that I've been increasingly irritated by ebikes. They drive on the bike paths (even though that's not legal here), and when doing so they drive far too fast and don't even try to warn others using the path that they're passing.
I've seen a half dozen cases of ebikes slamming into pedestrians and bicyclists in the last few months.
I think the people advocating ebikes need to start educating people driving them about how to do so without endangering people, or this is going to turn into yet another flash point between groups who should be on the same side.
The problematic ebikes are already breaking the law by driving on bike paths where motorized vehicles are prohibited. All they'd really have to do to both be legal and to avoid endangering and angering other users of the path is to not use the motor while on them.
Since they don't, I don't think they'd care anything about speed limits, either.
And yet we effectively force most people to drive private cars largely on basis of how our cities are laid out and invest in infrastructure.
I'd also suggest that in many countries with high PT usage (Japan etc.), very few people feel "forced" to take it. Many services operate with very little taxpayer funding (certainly no more than goes into building & maintaining roads etc.)
If you think owning a car makes you less dependent, I've got a bridge to sell you. Between gas, insurance, oil changes, brake and strut replacement, tires, and various fluids, you are arguably MORE dependent with a car than without one. And that's not counting the dependence on other drivers not acting the fool with several tons at high speeds.
"Independence" due to car ownership is a sales tactic, not a real thing. Folks in New York City aren't inherently more "dependent" than you are for their transportation needs.
That isn't to say more public transport investment is bad, but there are other alternatives. For example, make ebikes cheap and make inner cities be ebikes only. In places like NY or Boston, everyone on ebikes would likely result in faster trip times.