Perhaps you were thinking of RS-485, which actively drives both bus states and therefore can get away with unterminated buses at low bitrates / short runs.
You are forgetting that CAN can work at short distances without being a differential bus at all.
I mention this where I wrote “no transceiver AND no termination”.
Arduino “took off” because it was easy and standardized. You and I could probably lay hands on a 120R today, but fewer than 0.01% of the population could without ordering something (at which point you could just as well order an MCP2515 module).
It’s a “what’s in my hand right now?” hurdle not an “it’s technically advanced” hurdle that makes 0 external parts such a selling point.
