HI, I saw this last year at CES. It was in the tent outside the maln hall, installed in a S2000. I had a long talk with the guys at the booth, they had never heard of the Empeg. They seemed almost indignant when I told them I had been doing the same thing for three years.
From what I remember, it may be good for a common user, but is missing the advanced features of the empeg. The USB harddrive is indeed upgradable, as nothing but music is stored on it. They didn't have XM support planned, and I'm not sure about ripping from CD to HD.
max_