The comparison between 1990s search engine displacement and the early American automobile industry has a critical failure mode: it completely ignores the physical constraints and regulatory burdens involved in making cars.
Switching from AltaVista to Google was literally a click, but building a new car meant securing huge capital investments, factory space, and actual steel and rubber.
That jump in complexity means the low switching costs of a digital API don't apply; you can't just snap to a new car manufacturer like you can a search engine, because real-world production has massive blast radii for errors.
Trying to draw informational context from digital examples overlooks the fundamental weakest link in any physical market: getting actual stuff built and approved.