My brother does relevant work for a big auto firm in Europe; I pointed him at this discussion and this was his commentary:

Wow, a pretty long discusion in just 3 days and somehow it still manages to get back to "is apple really that clever?". I think most of the points were made - the centre console is the most valuable piece of real estate in a car, and two super-size McD cups take up a LOT of space. Then add in new European 0.33l slim cans (red bull design) which fall over in big cupholders and the problem gets quite tricky. Also what customers complain about depends a lot on how the questionnaires we (the car industry) send them are costructed - I suspect the north american surveys have several questions on cupholders and fewer on say visibility, wind noise or paint quality.