Agreed and lets just say that I know a ton about this and also about another company that rhymes with frugal with my time working on maps.Apple was successful because they could control the hardware and the software to make them work in harmony with the Iphone. I would argue for long time, the visual styling of the hardware, along with hardware features such as camera....were just as critical to the Iphone's success as the software was. Apple will not have that control anymore.
The Android approach won't even work as well here since doing a OS for a variety of phone makers was pretty damn simple. One giant screen.
Making a system like Android work on cars will be a nightmare. Just look at how many models each auto makers has. Look at how many configurations of screens a single auto maker has across it's own lineup. Think of how many internal hardware configs there will be. It will be a nightmare.......and dear god do I feel for those software engineers at Apple who are on Car Play.
Btw, the announcement of this, the timeframe, the group of legacy auto signed on, etc.......all tells me the Apple Car is dead.
The TL;DR is that @StarFoxisDown! is totally right, without the hardware being in control of Apple, there is very little that will improve with this implementation outside of maybe some more fluid UI. What you won't get is something that competes with Tesla's implementation. If I'm wrong, good for Apple and who ever implements this. I would rather chew glass than be the product manager that has to somehow bend time and space to make my software work on old, super constricted micros, memory modes that are unworkable and forced data structures that don't allow any fluid communication. Building this out will be like trying to build a skyscraper on top of quicksand, the more you build the faster it sinks or is more prone to falling over.