I hope they do it in a standards-based way this time.

I'm about to return a Sony head-unit that only supports Samsung and Xperia phones via a hellish mix of USB tethering, VNC and uPNP.

I know that car audio isn't normally modified now that manufacturers have gone away from the 1 and 2 DIN formats, but if anyone else is reading this, stay away from the MirrorLink/DriveLink technology. AppRadio is the other competitor and the XDA guys have had more luck in unlocking it for all phones to use.

Hopefully Android Auto supersedes the whole mess.

Yes but the software being screencasted is not the regular phone interface that would not adapt to a tablet-like screen very well and contains many apps that are not useful. The phone detects the connection and casts a special software, optimized for automobile usage. So yes the screen is dumb, but also yes there is a special software that needs to be updated, and the article says that this special software won't be part of the standard Android open source layer.