Ford Sync was WindowsCE based so Ford took it in the shorts for a number of years. Seems Bill Gates got tight with the Ford CEO and wed them to Windows CE and the rest is history. Just like BMW, they got suckered into using a really bad OS and worst, suckered into a long contract. With that kind of history, letting others own some user facing software seems easier. You all should already know of BMW's problems with letting Microsoft software control automobile hardware. It was not pretty but again, they were stuck for years with Microsoft and then they put Linux under the hood. And it probably happened far more times but all under the public radar.
I found this on the interweb by a guy who said he worked on the team which created the Ford Sync system:
The short answer is no. Ford partnered with B-Squared because someone knew someone is the way I understood things. Around the time SYNC was getting to be announced, Bill Gates & Bill Ford were seen in local media (TV news, papers, etc...) riding around in a model-T at Henry Ford Village with the reports being that Microsoft wanted to get into automobiles. Out of this, somehow, B-Squared was chosen (pushed on guys like me) with the comments always being they have a lot of domain expertise in bringing up WindowsCE on embedded platforms.
LoB