Newer cars without cd players-what now?

The built in hard disk drive (HDD) is part of the Acura TLX technology package, not a base level feature, I am pretty certain.

It supposedly tags with album information and art when ripped to, much like ripping a CD to disk storage at home.

Album art is displayed as background on the dash display when played from Apple Carplay as well.

I’ll try the HDD soon and see how well it works and report back.

Alan,
I don't know what your budget is for the SUV, but I purchased a 2016 Lexus RX 350 for my significant other and it has a cd player, which is standard equipment.

angelwars
According to Mapman the answer is yes, sort of
He said the Acura tlx rips a cd to its internal hard drive and then that is it, no need to use the actual cd again.
Technology is running amok!

A head unit you can just download a load of music into? - no phones, usb sticks, DAP's or discs needed, it's all ready to go on board - does this exist?

Lots of options for playback once you have ripped your cds to your computer.
As I always carry my phone I just bought a 64gb micro sd card for my LG g5 and transferred albums I wanted from my computer to my phones sd card.
Then I usually connect by Bluetooth as you are supposed to do, and select whatever I want to play. Only downside on this is that I have to select the music on the phone not from the "infotainment" center...... Seriously who the Hell came up with that tag!

Buy a decent little digital portable player and just AUX it into the head unit? I've got a Cowon Plenue D, 32 GB internal storage so plenty enough and handles all formats in PCM. I play all my CD's ripped to AIFF as I'm an Apple user but you've got the option of lower or higher 'quality' files. It sounds great - only hassle is you have to control playback on the player. I actually stopped using my car CD player to do this.

@dweller 

“ Can't you get an after-market CD player anymore? Just sayin“

+1........and even sent the OP a pm suggesting the same thing.   Haven’t gotten a reply.....

Spotify (largest catalog + easy user interface), etc. can be accessed directly on your new car's audio system.

Thanks to all of you, responses were great. I'm in the gathering information stage now and appreciate your ideas. Phil, what cd ripping program do you recommend?

Acura TLX has a cd player that rips cds played to a hard drive so no CD needed after one play.  

I have not used it yet  though. I mostly use plex on iphone and Apple Carplay.   Sound quality is very good.   

The loss of CD players in cars can be a bummer.  I don't often listen to music in the car as I prefer talk radio there on Sirius XM.  However, I do have an Apple iPod Classic 160 Gig. connected to my infotainment system via USB.  It shows up on the infotainment screen displaying artist and title and I can play my own tunes when desired.  All songs were imported onto my 1 Gig. iMac in AIFF, CD quality, so the sound quality is quite good.  Also use the iPod with my Shure 535 in-ear phones.  Sweet.

If you're not up for hunting down an iPod, then @effischer 's approach sounds reasonable.

If you already have a computer with a CD drive, you don't need anything but some patience and maybe some software.  It will take time to copy all of your CDs to the computer hard drive and that's where the patience comes in.  Took me a 4 or 5 days to get my 200+ discs copied.  Once they're on the hard drive, you can copy them to USB or SD (phone card) drives.  You'll want to make sure you copy everything into your computer in either MP3 or WAV because not all car stereos are compatible with all the other file types.  I personally prefer WAV because it's full red book CD standard at 16 bit 44.1 kHz, but it means that you use up more storage space.  Could be an issue if you have a lot of discs.

You can search the digital forums here to get info on software, but JRiver is one that's readily available and fairly inexpensive that folks have recommended to me in the past.  Runs about $50 if I recall correctly.  Lots less than the TEAC.

Good luck & happy listening!