Just bought a brand new MY 2020 Volvo XC90, the USB interface will play flac and mp3, but has a capacity of only 15,000 songs and 1,000 songs per playlist. None of my last 3 purchases (2015 BMW, 2017 Audi) have had a system that worked as well as a Karma.

I'm stunned really.

I thought at one stage empeg was going to be licensing it's tech to OEMs, did this ever happen? Maybe there's no demand with Apple Play and Android Auto?

I think it's long enough that the NDA is irrelevant. At one point, we were working with Ford, and got as far as putting our software in one of their 2xDIN headsets. Nothing substantive ever came of the relationship, though. Some of the software improvements ended up in the Rio Karma, and in car-v3.

Such a shame, not a single car manufacturer seems to care about this aspect.

These days I think they're farming it off to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, or a simple bluetooth connection to your phone. Less work for the auto company to do, yet still a couple logos they can put on the marketing as selling features.

I'd be happy with bluetooth audio built it. My 2008 Highlander was just a tiny bit shy of the auto pipeline to receive bluetooth audio. I only have hands-free. Very annoying. Especially since at that time it was a widely-used standard, but these things take an eternity to get into the auto industry. Another reason I think some of them are fine with off-loading the work to Apple and Google.

Some of them might even realize that they suck at the in-car entertainment stuff.

Bluetooth is great, but I've spent years crafting some of my playlists. I've only really completed my 1960s and 1970s ones yet, everything else still WIP it'd be nice to be able to play them in the car.