> The manufacturing of a car is responsible for a very significant amount of the emissions it produces over its life.

Nope.

The embedded energy in manufacturing a gasoline car is maybe 1/8th or 1/10th its total lifetime emissions. This is why EV's are so much better cradle-to-grave than gasoline cars -- yes, EV's require extra energy to manufacture the batteries relative to a gasoline car, but even so, that extra energy cost is more than offset within the first few months of electricity-powered driving, even if your local grid is primarily coal powered. By far most of a car's lifetime emissions are from operating it, not manufacturing it.

See chart on page 3 of this Union of Concerned Scientists report: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...