Not visibly. But the tech stack has changed substantially.
I'd find it quite an achievement if the UX has largely stayed the same while things under the hood got modernized over and over again and went with the times, subtly bringing innovations to the UX as well without people realizing. It's a feature that things don't look substantially different every two years.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/05/23/carplay-android-a...
> A report from Straits Research found that 98% of newly produced vehicles were compatible with either CarPlay or Android Auto. Meanwhile, 80% of prospective car buyers strongly preferred having these smartphone-based infotainment systems in their new vehicles.
The same research also shows Asia-Pacific to be the biggest market for these products, though North America is the fastest-growing.
Tbf. 25% connected is huge. If you just jump into your car to quickly do groceries or pick up your kids, you may not be interested in connecting your phone to your car, even if you really like that feature. So there could be a natural ceiling for the "connected" number and 25% feels getting close to that ceiling actually.
And everyone is just frustrated with laggy UI's in cars. But in reality they'll probably still just use Waze with a 10 buck phoneholder suction-cupped onto the windscreen.
People may have different preferences from yours.
Nevertheless, some people prefer not to accept them while not being entirely anti-tech either. You may not be agreeing with choices other people make, but it goes a little far to call them "absurd on its face", don't you think?