Cars are going to dictate what technology silo you end up joining. The car that works the best as a communicationpod/office will win the next major consumer battle just as Apple won the smart phone war. This is about Google not Tesla.
There is a trend of not owning a car, at least in Europe, thanks to companies like car2go, moovel and many others. Uber too. Autonomous cars will further the trend. Cars are going to become a B2B product, not exactly Apple's playground. But this is in the long run so it could not matter even strategically.
About winning the smartphone war, if Apple won it, that was the war for cash. Android won the war for usage, same way IE won the browser wars. I wonder what's the margin on a car. If you have to make low margin products to keep selling high margin ones you end up low margin overall. So, if Apple goes for $50+k cars, it will still be a high margin business but even more biased towards the richest consumers. If it goes for 10k cars, that will be a big change in strategy.
