I know it sounds strange, but in order to control my phone MPD, I need to toggle MAFA’s HTTP streaming on and off again.
Toggling it gets the song (the ones after it) info to the car’s screen and allow me to contol the playback via the car screen and steering wheel buttons
In terms of means, I do not care so much about the method of automating (e.g. intent), it just seems to work and very generic in the Android platform so why not 
Every time I start my car I do it manually, so as long as the automation barrier has been breached in 1.8.0 (yay!!!) I would really benefit from such a feature