I want a laptop where the all of the design files are open source. It would be worth a serious premium in addition to the premium I would pay for the open POWER system. The few we have now are maxed out at 4GB. Someone is going to do it...
Your requirements probably aren't too far off of one of our Blackbird systems -- I suspect it's just the form factor (micro-ATX) that's the problem. You might even be able to do the pull plug for minutes trick with a suitably sized lithium battery tucked inside the slimline chassis. ;)
Your products target "Freedom, no matter the costs" while their products aim for "better than what the market has right now, at consumer friendly price points".
Both are important: they demonstrate that there's mass market appeal, you demonstrate that there's an achievable ultimate goal.
If you want to join forces, there needs to be a common story that works for both. Right now, their story isn't sufficiently Free-with-capital-F for you and your story isn't sufficiently consumer-compatible for them.
I just gave them a path to a desktop that is POWER based, with very low up front costs (basically take their existing Thelio chassis, swap mainboards from x86 to POWER, do some software builds of Pop!_OS, and do a trial launch). I think that's a far more reasonable initial trial than going for a full laptop. It's also relatively consumer friendly, especially in today's cloud era where the proprietary apps people are using might just well be behind a web browser in the first place.
If they were a laptop-only company I'd agree with your assessment (I'm not happy with the GPU situation at all, that's the primary blocker for a libre laptop), but they're a laptop and desktop company. That means there's more ways they can test market owner controlled systems than a full up laptop design with massive design + tooling costs for an uncertain return.
I suspect that the laptops are their mass market driver though. Note how S76 has laptops + desktops, Purism has laptops + phone stuff, and Pine64 has laptops, phones and watches.
All of them do laptops plus some excentricity that may or may not translate in good future business: desktop systems are excentric these days and apparently they're not even the most popular pick when branching out, phones are.