According to Briess, it is not made the same as crystal/caramel malt. It is a proprietary process that renders a higher proportion of something very similar to
'resistant starches'. Resistant starches are pretty much just what they sound like they are, they are resistant to enzymatic reduction to simpler sugars. The 'resistant sugars' in Carapils are resistant to further breakdown by enzymes. I e-mailed Briess about this very topic a while back and this is essentially what they said. I posted their exact response in another thread on Carapils here but don't have it saved on my phone so I don't have it right now (edit: found it, see below).
EDIT: and note that mashing higher yields something different. Mashing higher prevents complex sugars from being reduced to fermentable sugars, but those complex sugars could have been reduced had you mashed lower. Not the case with the 'resistant sugars' from Carapils.
I don't use it that much either, but I could say that about almost any particular specialty/crystal malt. I rarely use Special B...or Honey malt...or Aromatic, but I do use them all occasionally.
Here's that Briess response I posted in another thread: