I get and agree with your point but you're fighting a battle over irrelevant detail.
I am being pedantic, that is true, but I'm tired of the Leave side's presentation of the relationship between the UK and the EU. The fact is that the EU isn't a superstate, and we're not ruled from Brussels; on this - as on so many other things - the decisions made in Westminster are much more important. And where Brussels does make decisions it is because our government has decided that co-operating with other EU countries over these things is beneficial to us. Despite the constant rhetoric about political union replacing the single market, the overwhelming majority of stuff that the EU does is about the single market and most of what it does that seems to sit outside that (on VAT, for example) is there to prevent parts of the single market becoming toxic.
The argument is a philosophical one over the dynamic between the EU and the UK; arguing over the definition of words here isn't moving the debate forward.
The path has been towards greater integration and will probably continue to be. The reason for this is simple: integration is good. More integration means lower barriers between our nations making movement of goods, people and ideas easier to the benefit of all. Having a common voltage standard is great because it means a computer brought in England will work in Spain or Holland (okay, you'd need to buy a new plug but that's it); having common radio band usage allows mobile phone roaming; and so on and so forth.
However, it's very clear that there is no great appetite in the EU at the moment for any significant increases in integration. We're not going to get a big scary EU army, there's no appetite for it; and we're not going to become the United States of Europe, there's no appetite for it. And even
if there was, the EU couldn't force the UK to go down that path. The EU is not some remote ogre dictating to the UK, it's a common decision making organisation of which we're very much a part.
Cars are different between countries already, so I'm not sure what this means.
The single market is not yet perfect. Cars are one of the example where the process is not complete (and never will be completely because there's no chance of a UK switch to driving on the wrong side of the road) but there has been a convergence of all sorts of rules on cars, the clearest examples of this is the Motor vehicle type approval rules and the Euro emission standards, but there's also been a convergence of more minor details between countries.
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