Kenwood has followed Sony in launching six new car radios at IFA 2006 in Berlin Germany that allow users to connect USB hard drives or MP3 players to access thier music.

Rather than opt to create a flash drive within the car stereo like Sony with its Giga panel offering, Kenwood has announced that its new range of players will allow users using a USB connection to connect all kinds of digital mass storage media from USB to hard drives to MP3 players to the units.

The radios will then detect and play back audio files on the devices stored in MP3, ACC or WMA formats.

The four 1-DIN models KDC-W534UA, KDC-W5534U, KDC-W6534U and KDC-W7534U feature a USB cable connection on the rearside. While 2-DIN models, the DPX501U and DPX701U, both feature a USB connection at the front. The supplied USB cable makes it possible to directly connect a music player to the car system.

Apart from the USB connection, these models also feature a wide variety of possibilities to render especially MP3, WMA or AAC format music files as good and as practical as possible.

By means of the ACDrive system, developed by Kenwood in co-operation with PhatNoise, music recorded on USB media or CD-R/RW can be easily selected and played, just the way you are used to do that on your PC.

The units also feature an optional iPod adapter making it possible to connect and control Apple’s portable music player.

No word on pricing yet.

We will keep you posted.