> first few thousand miles or so of driving
Compared to efficient cars, this crossover point is as late as 50,000km. It does not pay off as rapidly as you are implying. Something like a Kia Niro with a normal-sized battery starts with an embodied CO2 deficit of ~5t. Something absurd like a Rivian is 20t in the hole from the jump and will never be CO2-positive except when compared to something equally wasteful like an ICE Hummer.
The only correct bit here is that they do require more CO2 to manufacture, but this is made up for by the dramatically reduced operating emissions in the first few thousand miles or so of driving (depending on the source of the energy used to charge it). Further, the grid is getting greener all the time, so operating emissions and the manufacturing emissions are both falling quickly while the operating emissions of fossil fuels remains extremely high (literally and figuratively).