This was just powering from my MacBook USB. The on/off switch in the car would be easiest approach. I like that. I haven’t really put much thought into long term for the Pi about stripping it down but it occurred to me I could mount the OS read-only and write logs to an external USB stick to avoid any sudden pwr loss issues.
Linux has been my bread and butter for 20 years and I owned an embedded electronics firm (mostly fpga, some embedded Linux and rtos) for 10 years. Adding a Pi and Megasquirt to my old Mopar is a nerd match made in heaven for me. Lol.