Context: The reliance on software as a distinguishing factor in the automotive industry is increasing. With a combined reliance on vendor supplied software and cost effective implementation, the AUTOSAR consortium was initialized to provide standardized platform specifications that enable re-use. Specifically the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform (AP) specification is aimed at providing a high-performance service-oriented architecture. Objective: The goal of this study is to investigate what pain-points emerge when developing AUTOSAR Adaptive applications and whether they originate from the platform specification, its vendor-implementation, or its local usage. Methods: We conduct a Design Science Research study, developing a minimal AP that serve as an experimental prototype for or investigation. Results: We find that a combination of specification-inherent, implementation-based, and local practices contribute to the emergence of pain-points. Conclusions: We conclude that the are specification-inherent reasons for pain-points, resulting from architectural choices and re-use goals. The implication for development organizations is the need to mitigate these effects with tooling and developer training-time.