The plastic gears discussed in the article are more expensive than metal so chances are the sorts of plastic gears you are encountering are different. The article could of been more informatively titled "Ridiculously expansive plastic gears are the future for some niche applications".

Plastic gears are quiet and lubricate themselves. but they're inferior in nearly every other way.

The materials mentioned are as much the past as the future. High tech polymers like Delrin and nylon have been in use for decades and saturate their markets already. These "future" gears have been around forever.

Yeah, the article seems not much different than the way they were pushing plastic gears back in 1967 during the Space Age, when everyone was always thinking a more advanced "future" is right around the corner. Because it was happening in many ways.

Well, at the rate things were progressing until Nixon . . .

But plastics do not always mean progress, except maybe for plastic sales campaigns. By at least 1984 the timing gears on a regular Ford 302 V8 had become plastic, instead of the metal specified by the original engineering documents.

Naturally the joke is going to precede the punchline.

It correlates well with people complaints about reccuring failure in recent german car brands. Maybe they're just cheaping out or maybe plastic is really not fit for the task.