Sadly they will probably jack up the price while they are at it too. I just moved everything to my own petsonal .io a few years ago. I don’t want to have to move again.
You’re probably correct, but it’ll still have to be competitive with other TLDs, so it probably wont go too high.
You would assume so, but then there are domains like .car/.cars/.auto/.sexy which cost more than 2000$ yearly.
All this is speculative of course, but those domains you listed are vanity domains in lucrative markets. I call them vanity domains, because it can easily set you back 3-4 figures to get a domain like me.blog , let alone yourname.cars which is quite desirable if you sell cars. As with everything else, domain prices are simply subject to the laws of supply and demand.
Regarding .io , compared to average country code domains, such as .de for example, that tend to be quite modestly priced, .io has seen substantial increase in the past 5 or so years, transformed from a geeky exoticism to a symbol of AI-hype tech companies.
At least from my perspective.