It frustrates me that NFS Heat never did have a proper PvP system in the game like Speedlists from NFS 2015 (NFS Reboot) and NFS Payback. I would had played NFS Heat a lot more if it did have PvP.
From what I read in the IGN article:
"Multiplayer, meanwhile, has been tuned to be "as low friction as possible." When you go into the multiplayer mode you can drive around the world, meet up with friends, or just mess around. While there, "people will be pinging off race requests and playlist requests and you can seamlessly join any one of those events at any time,”
It sounds like NFS Unbound could have the exact same "PvP" system as NFS Heat.
In NFS Heat, you start a countdown for anyone to join the race you selected. Nobody joins. Then you restart the countdown several times in hoping someone joins, which nobody joins or just one player joins if you are very lucky.
Sounds it's gonna be the same story with NFS Unbound from what the IGN article describes.