I think with their limited resource, Mazda probably will wait a bit and put all the effort in implementing the new standard, instead of wasting effort on Carplay and Android Auto now just to scrap them later.
I don't think that's what's happening here. For a company to be joining a consortium like this is to make sure they are involved and in the know. It is also a way to keep options open, in a quickly changing tech landscape. Mazda is probably devoting little to no engineering effort to this right now, just waiting for it to become more mature and with proven success record.
Whereas with Android Auto and CarPlay, these systems are shipping for a while and, I believe, people like them.
The part that you don't see, services running in a datacenter, such as voice recognition, Google maps backend, machine learning etc. are the big advantage Google and Apple have over Ford/Toyota. What makes these systems awesome is mostly not present in the car. Ford/Toyota will need to beg Apple to support their tech properly.
Last edited: