What is there to gain from doing this? repairs and possible tows would be even worse if its from an environmental standpoint. Also driving old cars to death is better for the environment than transitioning to new vehicles just because. Reduce and reuse is true for cars too.

Why only ICE vehicles? EVs might be marginally better, but cars are still cars, and they kill hundreds of people every year, cost billions of dollars in direct infrastructure costs (in the huge subsidies that roads get), and untold amounts more in indirect infrastructure costs (because of how inefficient low-density car-centric sprawl is wrt things like sewerage and other municipal infrastructure). Over about 20 km/h the noise pollution is roughly equally bad, and the plastic pollution from tyres is just as bad if not worse on EVs.

What's needed isn't to push people from ICE vehicles onto EVs, it's to encourage people to use (and more importantly, governments to support) active transport like walking and cycling first and foremost, with public transport for longer journeys.

I'm also not a big fan of that sort of indiscriminate vandalism anyway. I'm not gonna bat an eye if you're doing it to all yank tanks, but people's sedans and hatchbacks? That's a bit much, IMO.