These electronic engine control systems are far more complex and have many, many more potential points of failure than the systems that preceded them. But they also have many more performance checks and responses to the changes in performance that are observed. It is really common now to find an ICE engine still performing reasonably well with no maintenance and well over 100k miles of service (160 km for the metric guys who don't routinely go back and forth). Unheard of for systems that depended on points and open loop carburetors.
Nice to hear that marketing has reached you.
I drive a 1988 Toyota, 1.6 liter engine, with a carburetor, no sensors, no computers, no electronics, and have 410000 km (250k miles) on it. Rust has eaten most of the car already, and my tailpipe just broke in half (sorry, neighbors!). I'm waiting for the car to convert itself into a cloud of rust, like
poof. Meanwhile, I'm driving it. It passes the inspection, anyway...
I bought it four years ago, for 400EUR, driven 360000km, after which I have driven 50000km. I have had to replace wiper blades.
But the engine is working perfectly. At 370000km was the first time in its history it needed any adjustment. This was a 5-second job of turning one screw to adjust the mixture, during the mandatory exhaust analysis, without extra cost. This was 3 years ago, and it still passes the exhaust tests with a large margin, and runs just fine. No problems whatsoever with the engine.
Normal oil changes only - no special maintenance ever done. I stopped doing oil changes after 380000km as well.
160000km "unheard of".
Yeah, we hear that a lot. That carburetors were unreliable and you
need a complex computerised system. These ECUs tend to be extremely reliable, indeed. It's the multitude of sensors and the ECU's dependence on them producing right data, that causes issues in reality. But I well understand this is all needed to slightly increase fuel efficiency, increase the weight-power ratio of the engine, and decrease pollution; all good, especially the last one. But let's be honest about it, it being "more reliable" is just pure marketing bullshit, and that's understandable because people (me included) are selfish idiots who are not concerned about the environment, but want a reliable car. Thus this is what the marketing needs to tell us ("carburetors were unreliable, now we have a more reliable system!"), even if it is an outright lie. In reality, they have different failure modes. And the modern one has many, many more, some of which are fairly common (lambda sensor being one typical failure point).