I know. I do realise that, especially considering how much the Empeg cost you guys to develop.
This is the exact reason why I'm saying I don't believe I'll ever see such a product.

I know that the mp3 car audio market is still a very small market and will continue to be so until mp3 finally catches on to the 'big audience'. This 'big audience' being the people that don't use pc's besides for their work or that like music but are not freaky enough to actually want to learn everything that gets involved in encoding a good quality mp3. (your HSX109 unit is a good start for that). Maybe then they'll understand the advantages of a harddisk type unit with a nifty OS in the car.
For now, I (sadly) don't see that many people trading in their car-cd player for an mp3 player. 'Cause you've got to hand it to cd players : you put in a Cd and it plays. Can't get much simpler than that.