I think you're selling design as a difference short, for Apple design is holistic and affects the entire product experience not just the look and feel or the entertainment ux.
They design the manufacturing process to squeeze out nickels on the dollar and using CM means they avoid legacy overhead that weighs down behemoths like GM, VW and Toyota. They also don't have any legacy overhead tied to engineering around ICE. As we've seen with Tesla, they had to reinvent almost everything because most of the problems traditional car companies had been working on don't exist in an all-electric vehicle.
Apple designs the buying process, which for cars is nightmare fuel for most people. Even in their normal retail stores, buying is easier, you can pick up some things off the shelf, ring it up yourself right where you're standing with the Store app and then walk out. This may be Apple's biggest advantage from the customer's perspective.
Carplay I haven't used but I think you may be selling this short too, on /r/cars when an industry entertainment guy asked what they should be doing the most upvoted response was: get out of the way and make dumb screens for Android Auto and CarPlay [1]. Maybe you're right though and it is outclassed by some current offerings. Perhaps this area is an Apple weakness but another possibly is that CarPlay is to iCar as the Motorola ROKR was to the iphone.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/2vfubz/i_am_one_of_th...
You talk about Apple's materials being shoddy but that is not the impression I have (outside of charging cables). My iphone 3gs and 4s have held up very well and metal frame ipads, macbooks and iphones seem to do even better. Greg Koenig's much linked post about their Watch manufacturing [2] basically said Apple is operating at the pinnacle of craftsmanship when it comes to materials, precision and finish. One quote of many possible: "I see a process that could only have been created by a team looking to execute on a level far beyond what was necessary or what will be noticed. This isn't a supply chain, it is a ritual Apple is performing to bring themselves up to the standards necessary to compete against companies with centuries of experience." There is plenty of room for technical gimmicks here in the auto industry and I fully expect a video of Jony Ive explaining how revolutionary it is for safety when the entire carframe is milled from a single piece of aluminum.
[2] http://atomicdelights.com/blog/a-glimpse-at-how-the-apple-wa...