A large body of work can be found in literature on Design Space Exploration (DSE) methods for distributed embedded system architecting (DESA). However, almost none of these methods is successfully adopted in automotive industry. To clarify the reasons, this paper 1) analyzes the current state of the art (SOTA) on DSE methods for DESA through a systematic literature study, focusing on the assumed architecting process and concerns; 2) investigates the state of practice (SOP) on DESA in the automotive industry through a literature study and interviews with experienced system architects from five different automotive manufacturers; and 3) analyzes the gap between SOTA and SOP, and thereby discusses potential improvements of DSE methods.