This car has a touchscreen panel. That car has reduced emissions. This car has park assist. But do you know what they all lack? A little robot that’ll help you along your way, but that’s exactly what the BYD Qin brings to the highway.

On display at the Beijing Auto Show, the Qin is a plug-in hybrid car from Chinese automaker BYD. The car itself isn’t terribly exciting as far as sedans go, but there is a little pop-up robot on the dash that serves as a central control point. It’s almost like having R2-D2 on your X-Wing, except this one looks a little more like EVE from WALL-E and it sits on your dashboard.

By interacting with the bot via voice commands, you gain control over the wireless Internet, location services, music downloads, and even driver fatigue prevention. The bot apparently has built-in cameras to keep an eye on how you’re doing. All said, you get more of a human-like interaction with your car via this bot, rather than simply speaking into the empty space in your car. It’s not exactly novel to see more and more electronics shoved into our vehicles, but this could be among the several steps we’re taking toward having robot chaffeurs. After all, we already have self-driving cars.

[Source]

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I realize that it’s really just a regular old Motorola DROID 2 under the hood (though that’s pretty new too), but you know how official Star Wars gear makes us.  You get the special carbonite-like box, Star Wars media dock, preloaded R2-D2 content and the DROID R2 D2 smartphone.  If you’re not so inclined to buy the $250 (after mail-in rebate and contract subsidy) for the handset, all Android 2.1 phones with Verizon can atleast get the Star Wars mobile app for $2.99. That gives you a game, photo gallery, live wallpapers, widgets, and other intergalactic goodies.

On a side note, did you know that George Lucas owns the trademark to the word “DROID,” so every time that HTC, Motorola, or Verizon use it, they probably cough up some cash.  Does that explain the $250 price tag?

[via Verizon and Droid R2D2 Site]

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Your favorite droid companion who can only speak in bleeps and bloops will be making its official debut with Verizon at the end of next month. Basically it’ll have the same specs and features as its non-Star Wars counterpart, with a rad blue and white paint job and an extra stellar sound packs.

Now, I just need to land from my intergalactic voyage from Nexus11 so that I can get a dock for this thing on my X-Wing.

R2-D2 Droid 2 date pinned at Sept. 30; plus, more pictures [Android Central]
Motorola’s DROID R2-D2 Special Edition to be released September 30th [BGR]

The post Say hello to the Motorola DROID 2 R2D2 edition, no sign of Cee Threepio just yet appeared first on Mobile Magazine.