My problem with it is that it takes up half of the baggage area
Then the solution is to find something equivalent that doesn't increase the risk to the pilot and passenger. Honestly, in something designed to be a light sport aircraft, you probably don't need to be carrying that much baggage to begin with. Opening up the baggage compartment further just seems (at first glance) to increase the possibility that a pilot might chance putting more weight back there than the aircraft can tolerate. If the design does not work for you as is, then you might be better off looking for another aircraft to build rather than trying to push the fuel tank into the cockpit unless you have the ability to design a very, very resilient fuel tank (along the lines of what the US Army used to drop its burn mortality rate in helicopter crashes to effectively zero from something like 40-50%). We have a design that hopefully will be able to do do that in an LSA and other GA aircraft but it's still at least couple of years away from being ready to market as we are still trying to test out it against the various standards that are established by the military and by our own investigations into real world tests.