I think the basic idea SonicBlue had was this:

"Hard-disk-based car players are still very expensive to manufacture, and people won't buy them in profitable quantities yet. The Rio Car is a perfect example of this, we were unable to sell even a few thousand of them until after we dropped the price to way-below-cost levels."

So SonicBlue is simply not trying to produce any more car players at retail. The empeg team's talents are is now being used to develop other prodcuts for SonicBlue. The most recent examples of such products are the Rio HSX-109 and the Rio Receiver.

Now, my personal opinion is that the reason the players didn't sell had little to do with the cost. I think that there are enough people in this world in the car player's target market (geek toy) that they could have been profitable. No, the problem is that very little effort was put into marketing the product. Now, this is just my opinion, and others on the BBS have disagreed with me on this point in the past, so take it for what it's worth. But I have a fear that the HSX-109 and the Rio Receiver may meet the same fate because SonicBlue can't seem to market their way out of a wet paper bag.

In the meantime, the term "OEM" has been mentioned by the empeg team here on the BBS. What this means is that SonicBlue will be developing and licensing products for other companies. It will then be up to those other companies to do the marketing and distribution of the products. If my opinion about SonicBlue's ability to market is correct, then this is really the best solution.

Also keep in mind that "OEM" does not necessarily mean Sony, Pioneer, etc. It might, but keep in mind that these companies have extensive car-stereo R&D departments of their own and are already releasing car players without help from SonicBlue.