What's the difference from AOSP as it is - can't find that in the article? AFAIK (I have it on my phone) there's nothing Google in there already, no changes needed. Google services and apps have to be installed and I simply didn't do that.
The Google related things that are excluded from AOSP are things that Google doesn't want them to be there, for whatever reason.
The Google related things that are excluded from this project are things that users don't want them to be there at all, i.e. everything Google related.
That said, /e/ is practically LineageOS, except you can buy it preinstalled on new phones.
https://e.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/e-state-of-d... (PDF)
There's also an updated description of /e/ here: https://doc.e.foundation/what-s-e