This is a really bad faith argument I hear, a real eye roller. It never advances the conversation, it is a proverbial “just asking questions.”
Why bad faith? You, your friends and the things you read never bring this up about electric trains and busses. If a Tesla doesn’t amortize by some napkin analysis, neither would an electric bus by that same exact analysis - just because someone somewhere doesn’t like Tesla, doesn’t mean there’s any truth to “electric car emissions don’t amortize.” Just because some article online somewhere says electric busses do and Teslas don’t also doesn’t make it true.
The worst thing the environmental activist community could do is lose Tesla as an ally. Nobody is going to give a fuck about some cobalt mines somewhere, as horrible as they are, or whatever more substantive grievance it is, if we have to endure another 20 years of excess emissions because environmentally conscious people second guess the purchasing of electric cars.