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Is Audi showcasing the LG G Watch R2 at CES 2015?

Last year wearables blew up at CES and the rest of 2014 featured them in all manner of shapes and sizes, from the Apple Watch, to our first wave of Android Wear devices. Now, something new, but oddly familiar has appeared at CES.

LG’s most recent offering, the LG G Watch R only debuted at IFA in Berlin last September, but car maker Audi was just spotted at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show with a new wearable said to have come out of the company’s new partnership with LG.

During Audi’s CES keynote presentation, board member Ulrich Hackenberg smartly slid up the sleeve of his jacket and touched a mysterious smartwatch on his wrist, summoning the Audi Prologue, which promptly drove itself out onto the stage.

Whilst the car is a beautiful thing to look at in its own right, closer inspection of the wearable Hackenberg used doesn’t point to any of the current smartwatch crop. It transpired that LG worked in partnership with Audi to create an all-new and exclusive wearable running a modified version of Android Wear.

We’re still trying to squeeze some details on the hardware out of Audi, but we suspect the current G Watch R served as the donor device. Audi’s smartwatch has a unique UI, unlike typical Android Wear devices that centres more around car-related applications, than the Google-centric interface of the stock experience.

The bodywork does away with the plastic form of the G Watch R and instead features what appears to be metal, with a conventional leather strap, a large crown and two additional hardware buttons above and below.

Whether LG or Audi plan on bringing this smartwatch passed the doors of CES is unknown, but despite its individuality it isn’t a successor to the current G Watch R (breathe a sigh of relief current G Watch R owners), nor is it the rumoured webOS-based smartwatch that we’ve heard about.

Check out the links below for more images of Audi’s smartwatch.

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