When you can’t get what you want, you teach yourself to want what you can get and then preach to everyone else that they should want it too. This applies to many other things too beyond just cars.
It’s not that the criticism of private cars isn’t valid, but not having one because you can’t afford it isn’t virtuous. It’s only virtuous when you could easily have one but choose not to.


Right, or in other words “physical reality is full of natural and insurmountable inequalities.” But cars are a human invention, which makes them a mechanism of inequality - that’s to say, something where went out of our way to “do work” to de-flatten the playing field. The cars are introducing a new inequality to human society.
And cars are also less efficient (in terms of space and material and fuel usage) than other modes of transport - trains, buses, bikes and walking. So of course, to someone who cannot afford cars, they will wonder if car dependent infrastructure was created and is maintained primarily to seperate those who can pay and those sho must stay (stay put). The expectation that everyone will have a car might mean that the transportless fellow has no access to pubic transport, because his local government decided they shouldn’t fund any. This is bad for the safety of children and the disabled, as well as the poor’s access to work.