Easy cowboy
Elm has been decided for 1.0, it is universal, easy to implement, and being through hole it is very "kit"able. We are going to work on the price AFTER getting something out there.
for the post elm obd version, we hope to be as low cost as possible, but have not abandoned the arduino platform yet. ishiyakazuo is looking into a software only (duino + a couple transistors) ISO implementation. Maybe you want to sort out the bare bones CAN details? It would be good if there is a bare minimum through hole couple transistors software only CAN version as well, as far as price and assembly go.