> You could easily avoid every single one of these issues by driving an older bog standard, cheap car rather than one costing tens of thousands. Seems like a no brainer really?

We're already set to pass 1.5C warming in the next couple years, which was supposed to be the best-case scenario as of 10y ago. I don't know if you noticed, but batteries cost more to make because we're building the supply chain for them, after 100+y of "bog standard" vehicles left us with a world that each year registers new temperature records and increasingly violent weather events.