Cursed is exactly how I would describe it - because it works great until it doesn’t and it of course gives you zero clue why it won’t connect.

Anecdotally, I just got back from a holiday trip across Europe and crossed four international borders. At every single border crossing, my CarPlay session disconnected, and I had to toggle CarPlay off and back on in my phone settings to reconnect. Very strange, and I still have no idea what caused it.

It's a good idea actually, but it's also really complex to get right.

Early version of Android Auto could transfer over USB 2.0 instead of Bluetooth, which works, but it's not near as high bandwidth.

> Early version of Android Auto could transfer over USB 2.0 instead of Bluetooth, which works, but it's not near as high bandwidth.

This sentence doesn't make much sense - Auto (and CarPlay) still work in wired mode over USB 2.0 if the head unit supports it. They never worked over Bluetooth.

(And they use less than 15Mbps so USB 2.0s 480MBps are more than enough)

They use Bluetooth to configure WiFi. Most people call that Bluetooth, but technically you are correct.