>Most ecologically conscious person I know had an old toyota pickup despite being able to afford whatever Tesla or such. He knew the car was a sunk cost
My guess is that it was a small, rather high efficiency little subcompact Toyota pickup, and that it was driven relatively few miles annually and kept in good running order.
Depending on the country and engine, there's also a possibility it was a waste vegetable oil burner (that was quite popular in certain circles, and I believe the old Toyota diesels were just fine with it).
Also, there's more than just carbon emissions to consider, and this is an odd, deliberate-seeming blindness of the "environmental movements" of the past decade or so - blowing up a mountain for the minerals is fine, as long as it's carbon neutral. If you'd like to "never want another mobile computing device again," I suggest the book Cobalt Red, on the lies and deceit active in the DRC related to cobalt mining out there (basically, the nutshell is that regardless of what anyone claims to have done to improve the conditions, they've "worked around the problem" locally in ways that are almost impossible to detect on the ground, and it's still a ton of hand-dug cobalt in horrid working conditions, with the short lifespans and horrible deaths to go along).
It was a smaller (from 90s) v6 or even v8 gas car. The point is to manufacture a car, a tremendous amount of energy is used in everything, from breaking up rock, extracting the iron ore, smelting to make steel, to machining, to etc...
The CO2 emitted by the car during it use,( and you are correct, only ocassional few weekends use) is a rounding error.
Look up how much CO2 is emitted in producing 1kg of steel. And to further drive the point. This is just CO2. Consider pollution, by-products and water use for a more complete picture. Reuse is better in every sense
>Most ecologically conscious person I know had an old toyota pickup despite being able to afford whatever Tesla or such. He knew the car was a sunk cost
Depending on where you live, a Tesla can become more CO2 friendly in just 2 years. Especially compared to an old pickup. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-l...