It's not "possible restarting", we've been working with other car audio manufacturers for a while. (1) and (2) are correct though, with the addendum that the empeg/rio-car software is still in active development, showcasing our IP and testing out new concepts.

It's unlikely that any major manufacturer would produce something as geek-friendly as the empeg/rio-car though - the market in general is simply not willing to pay for (for example) ethernet on a car stereo. This sort of thing usually never leaves the engineering department's workbench - however, in a freak accident involving slashdot, the empeg-car escaped :)

The empeg/rio-car as-is sells only to a small niche of the car audio market - where geeks and audiophiles intersect. The very fact it ever happened is because we (at empeg) wanted to make a cool toy - we only originally planned to make 100 of them.

If we'd been really commercially minded (as empeg) we would have made a rather boring, functional box that did the job and nothing else. We probably would have sold a pile more of them, but it would have been a lot less fun - both for us and our customers.

In the future, the freedom and flexibility you see in the empeg-car will just be taken for granted; it'll become a baseline feature of cars. You're just several years ahead of the game ;)

Hugo