I've got a lot of sympathy for this point of view, as I drive a fully depreciated fifteen year old petrol car that is starting to rust through, but .. when you need to replace it you can just buy a secondhand one?

Environmentally it's almost certainly better to continue using an existing vehicle than to manufacture a new one. It's when you come to buy a new one that the choice matters.

Interestingly, depreciation is really dramatic on EVs. But there's also a high degree of churn. Companies introduce small EV models and then pull them entirely, so the old ones fall off a cliff value wise. I feel that savvy secondhand buyers could do fine.