I agree with everything you said, and yet the same time, my response is - so what?
Sure, with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to point a finger at Apple and go "I told you so". And with the benefit of hindsight, I would have bought the winning lottery ticket and been retired already. Let's not forget that Apple also released the Apple Watch in 2015, AirPods in 2016, the HomePod in 2018, kickstarted the Mac transition to Apple Silicon in 2020, and released the Vision Pro earlier this year. To fixate on one project that Apple cancelled before it was released just sounds to me like critics attempting to paint Apple as a rudderless company unsure of what to do after the iPhone.
Which I disagree with. This is just part and parcel of R&D. Not every endeavour bears fruit, and Apple could well have canned numerous other projects that were simply never reported. I don't think this is any implication that Apple has gotten complacent and is content to simply bank on the iPhone.
Where I think a lot of the criticism gets wrong is that Apple was banking on autonomous driving becoming a reality, which would in turn allow them to rethink the design of a car. It's not enough for Apple to simply release their own electric vehicle and call it a day. Coming out with a truly autonomous car (i.e. no steering wheel or rethinking a self-driving car as a room on wheels) was a worthy goal that ultimately didn't pan out, and that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
Apple should not be faulted for having doubts about a human-driven car being enough to rethink the auto industry.
I don't think the board is too bothered about this project cancellation either. If they want to nitpick over every error made, then I say - tell them to run the company themselves and see if they can do a better job.