It actively harmed the environment. Once the thing has been manufactured doing anything less than driving it into the ground is wasting the upfront environmental cost.
Not always. The average car in Wyoming gets driven 24,000 miles a year something getting 12 MPG is burning 2,000 gallons a year directly and another 30% indirectly from manufacture transportation and extraction of oil. That’s a lot for a 5 year old car you could easily be saving 30,000+ gallons of oil.
Obviously, that’s average many cars are significantly worse. Run the numbers and swapping a high mileage but poor fuel economy car for a hybrid/EV and the payback can be a net positive.
