we're pretty much there. The new pi 4 compute module breaks out the pcie bus. The official pi4 compute base board routes that to a standard pcie x1 slot instead of USB 3.0 which is a massive win in my book (hello more ethernet/sata/fpga/nvme/etc). It's a baby Arm mobo with pci and I'm a little excited :-)

I have a pi4 compute + base board on pre-order plus I just bought a pcie x1 m.2 M-key card off amazon. I plan to use the SD card (emmc on my model) to boot a kernel and use the m.2 card for storage.

I think the pi foundation finally realizes that the pi has the potential of becoming an affordable and accessible SoM (system on Module) with a huge community behind it.