With all the core functions being driven from the iphone, how can pioneer justify such high price (~$1000) for essentially a screen and bunch of adapters to the car's systems. ?

That's the retail price (and who says they have to justify it). You can find them for a little less than $600 on eBay and other retailers.

You don't have to buy all the sensors they bought for CarPlay to function. http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/NEX/AVIC-5000NEX.

CarPlay is one feature of the Pioneer receivers. The units are still fully functional navigation / stereo systems even without an iPhone.

Agree. But its seems those features will not be used as much. This highlights a market opportunity for a simple CarPlay-only client that is significantly cheaper.

Probably, but since it is the one of the first to market, if not the first, it's not unusual for it to cost more than what is really reasonable for most people.

It's first to market?

Whoah, I had no idea that CarPlay was software. Does that mean it can be loaded onto any after market system with the right specs? How would they deal with the different hardware targets if that's the case?

Edit: On second thought, it looks like they're partnering with manufacturers so is Apple also providing their own version of the HW as well?

Right now there's 2 options.

Either the manufacturers load it onto the car when its built or you can buy the standalone system itself. Apple has partnered with car manufacturers like Honda, Ford and Kia and select models will likely come with it.

Pioneer recently came out with their own standalone system with CarPlay which you could install yourself.

It would be interesting to see if they give you the options of choosing what system you want when you initially purchase your car. CarPlay vs AndroidAuto vs Other ones.

For Ford that would be a very smart move, as the current Ford dash UI's are usually trashed for bad design in every review. I don't see Ford mentioned but its logo is among those shown at the bottom of the carplay page (https://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/).

The slow speed of the display would be very distracting, I think. If you watch the video closely, you can see that he pauses for 500ms whenever he touches an on-screen button. This seems like it would be annoying in the long run.

This is hopefully a manufacturer specific problem.

Might not be. If there's a whole round-trip from touchscreen to comm link to iphone back to comm back to screen (including anything that needs to be drawn), that's not out of the question.

I'm very excited very this. Car makers are terrible at doing software and it seems to be getting worse as touch screens become the norm.