Something that bothers me about replacements is the seeming downplaying of total environmental cost (as compared to carbon cost).
My car is 18 years old, and my brother in law is encouraging me to buy an electric vehicle. But what about my current vehicle? There's nothing wrong with it. Surely all the steel and energy that went into its manufacture needs to be counted, and all the energy (and lithium) that goes into an electric vehicle needs to be counted.
Surely it would be better, in terms of total environmental cost, to run my car until it is goes absolutely kaput?
Depends on emissions.
EDIT: And surely the same with many other appliances, like fridges? Surely keeping an inefficient fridge going is a lower total environmental cost than buying a brand new one. Either you will sell or give away your old fridge for its inefficiency to be used by someone else, or it will go to landfill, with all the materials (and refrigerant) with it.
These are viable arguments, but I just get the feeling that you are using them as excuses.
Excuses? I don't need an "excuse" to buy or not buy a new car. (In fact, I have never bought a new car, they've always been used).
Also, are older fridges that much more inefficient?
Well, the scale is possibly different compared to cars, but the comparison is an illustration.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce is the biggest component here as it limits needing to waste energy recycling.
But 'reduce' is my entire point!
My brother-in-law currently has a Tesla (I don't know what model, I don't do "cars"). Yet he has replaced his car every two or three years for decades. His smug satisfaction with his current car does not seem to be justified, especially given that all the other cars he had had nothing wrong with them.
Personally, I'm not sold on electric vehicles. The tether is an issue for me. Get a vehicle with low emissions and very good mileage. I wish the hybrid system could have worked out, but it kind of was abandoned. The Prius got you up there in mileage and had seating for four.
Electric vehicles have a number of problems that are rarely raised. For one, many people live in apartments with no place for their car to be recharged at night ("just charge it overnight, the range won't be a problem!")
There's also, for want of a better word, an ableist component to EVs. I am very, very tall and it took me years to find a car (my current car) that accommodated my frame. EVs don't come in different sizes to accommodate different people, but petrol cars do.
But even size were not an issue, the wasteful aspect of replacing perfectly functioning things still bothers me.
I could afford another car. I've even visited a dealership once or twice in the past few years. But each time, my brain says "how can you possibly justify half a year's gross salary to replace something that does not need replacing"?
So, I guess my implied question to the OP is: why does the American postal system replace its vehicles every few years? Why not replace them when and if they need to be replaced?