Big harpoon is 'solution to space junk'

[NNadir]

15. Well, there you go... These however are most likely small ion engines for small adjustments.

I very much doubt that their exhaust is likely to vaporize anything.

The mass efficiency of an ion engine is related to the accelerations that can be achieved. For removing space debris as a side product of propulsion in Earth Orbit, I'm sure very high accelerations would be required. The higher the acceleration, the lower the mass flux required to move or vaporize a small floating wrench.

For a stupid possibly biologically contaminated Telsa car launched into space by a trivializing publicly subsidized billionaire, of course, very large fluxes and very high accelerations would be necessary.