Sorry...it's pretty easy to go more than 200K miles on ICE these days. I've got 394,000 miles on my car - original engine and transmission. Yes - starter, alternator, diesel injection pump, and injector nozzles have been replaced, along with the normal body/suspension parts one would expect.
But after reading this gent's article and the comments, what I'm left with is the strong belief that it's better not to respond to his article(s) because it'll only make him dig in deeper. We're certainly not going to change his mind.
Here's something from what might appear as coming from 'left field' that I think we can apply to EVs. There's a small company in New Mexico that's been experimenting with highly efficient housing for more than 40 years. It took years of battling with the state and local government to get permission to continue development because what he was building was so far from what the government considers 'normal' that they couldn't wrap their minds around the project.
I think a barrier between us and having good direction for the future is that we...everywhere I have been, every group of people I have talked to from all over the country and all over the world, they sort of base what they are going to do in the future on the present and on the past, which I would call convention. Like the state of New Mexico said, "You can't use a catch water system in New Mexico, because there's not enough precipitation." They were basing their assessment of this idea for the future on conventional catch water systems and conventional use of water...we can no longer base the future on convention. We have to base the future on invention. We have to be able to take a few leaps if we're even going to have a future. We're still holding on to the past, but we're going to have to take a leap of faith for a future.
[Water from the Sky, Michael Reynolds, page 27]
The author of the 'alpha' piece claims to be an accountant and attorney that works with tech companies. He appears to me to be deep on the 'inside' of the machine built on ICE and cheap oil - he's inside the status-quo economy where anything different is a threat. He's strongly in the 'base tomorrow on yesterday and today' camp. Someone suggesting that there's a viable alternative to gasoline might as well be saying they're going to ration his oxygen from now on - now it's an ego and survival issue. From his perspective, his paper is correct. To those of us that know otherwise, he's a nutcase. And never the twain shall meet.
Back to water. I expect us EVers in a sea of ICE might feel a bit like Reynolds in a London Taxi with the driver complaining about a lack of drinking water:
Just imagine the feeling of being in a London black taxi cab, driving in the rain; the windshield wipers are going on their highest speed; it's just dumping. You're in traffic looking at row houses just getting pounded with water from the sky all around and the driver about a water shortage! I mean that is off the wall. So many incidents like that...what the hell is going on? And then here we are out in the desert and we've got banana trees growing from harvested water.
It's all ok - there's room for both groups. I'm certainly not going to change the author's mind - but I'm also not going to change my direction because the author - or thousands of misguided authors - think they should define 'normal' for me.