Apple had plans to make an electric car. Then, earlier this year, it cancelled that project. Now, the plan seems to be to just get Apple CarPlay into everyone else's cars.

This is obviously smart, because it expands the Apple ecosystem, but it also means that they have to make it so that automakers want them in their cars.

And since car companies have their own brands to manage, you end up with a somewhat unique scenario where Apple doesn't own and control both the hardware and software, and it needs to be flexible in order to scale.

This is if they want to control all of this:

The solution: A special co-branded experience that is going to allow car makers to heavily customize the appearance of CarPlay such that it reads as their own brand. This is how the next generation of the software will work and I think it's a fascinating balancing act.

Here's another screenshot:

If you're also interested in this sort of thing, here's a video explaining the new CarPlay's design system. It's primarily aimed at automakers and system developers, but you'll also like it if you're a designer.