Technology

Honestly, it's probably not happening unless the EU forces it :/

Yep , auto manufacturers needs incentive to develop a open protocol such as this. Its not a easy task as this would need to be complaint with many regulations and safety standards. I have some hope for the SDV (software defined vehicle) future like COVESA where the industry is moving towards an opensource architecture but for user softwares you're right its totally with the manufacturer to allow such open api to users.

Exactly.

The path forward with this kind of thing is for a defacto standard to emerge from out of left field, which is ever more challenging today, since auto manufacturers began integrating the head unit 2 decades ago (they saw what was coming, and took the opportunity to lock out third party stereo systems by integrating everything). Basically a push for vertical integration.

I don't know how to accomplish this given the vertical integration the manufacturers have developed. I do know regulation is the worst possible way, and should only be used as a last-ditch effort, because that's when you get malicious compliance and basically garbage results.

Seems CANBUS and OBDII provide an opening to these systems - for years I've wanted to utilize this connection to modify some car behaviour. Like the remote start on one car will only run for 7 minutes. That's a joke, it takes 30 minutes to get the half inch of ice off, and that's with me out there chipping at it too. Or how the heat/ac controls are fixed on remote start, and I'd like it to go max defrost/max fan immediately, and turn on the rear defroster. If we knew the signaling of this vehicle's CANBUS for these things, seems we could build a plugin module with wifi/Bluetooth and control it from a phone.

And if we have such a module, the manufacturers would have to react to it.

As a side note, I don't use or want a car play system. I've yet to find a use for it, I dislike massive screens in cars as it is, and those systems age fast anyway (I keep my cars a very long time).

I installed a mapping head unit in my car in 2010. It was alright, but even then the phone was just simpler to use, and the screen was more than sufficient (and a better display too). Since then I've had probably 4 phones, numerous OS and app upgrades, with the exact same head unit still in place (my car is now 18 years old, I intend to keep it at least another 10). My current phone blows away that head unit screen (I just recently put the factory, no-screen unit back in).

The fixed nature of car stuff is a major problem, and why I'm pretty indifferent to car play stuff. People need to stop replacing their cars - today's vehicles can last a very long time - my 18 year old car has 270k miles on it, and I would drive it cross-country right now. Using my phone for GPS, music, podcasts, whatever.