I have a 2008 Honda Element. The body is rusting out, but the engine and transmission are fine. The engine required a fairly expensive repair about 10 years ago because I used to go to a quick oil change place and they use crappy filters. If I had always done my own oil changes, the cost of maintenance would have been very small over its 12 year life with nearly 300k miles. The engine has lots of moving parts. It will eventually "wear out", but many of the wear items could even be replaced in the engine for a few thousand dollars.
Most of the parts are cheap now. They're made with 100+ year old techniques that have been refined and optimized with real world experience. Imagine if engines were mostly standardized across the industry! They'd be dirt cheap.
One of the supposed selling points of EVs is that they have fewer moving parts, so they're inherently more reliable and cheaper to build, own, and operate. That currently doesn't seem to be the case. It might be one day, but isn't now. That claim is made repeatedly in the face of the real world experience of people who drive 1989 Honda Civics with 500,000 miles on the original engine and transmission.
In theory it would be possible to make a ICE car that basically lasts forever; use an aluminum frame with a body-on-frame design with rust-free or easily replaceable body panels and boom, you've got an eterna-car. Sure, the suspension and other components will need to be replaced periodically, but they will need to be replaced on any vehicle regardless of the power plant.
It's all but impossible to say which approach is better overall--EVs are cheap, long lasting ICE cars. Governments want to make sure there's no competition for their favored technology for whatever reason. I really hope people start fighting back hard and throwing some elbows soon.
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