Re: Tomtom is now a verb

Jitze <couperus@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

We are all familiar with how "To Google" has become a verb. I recently
travelled around Europe a little, and encountered a new verb there
which had me baffled for a while. To Tomtom.

It appears that this is a brand of populer GPS (BritE: SatNav)
device, and has worked its way into both Dutch and German
as a verb - to be wielded about by today's motorist with as
much aplomb as "To Google" is used in other contexts.

It is of Dutch origin.
BTW, much of the other mapping software you buy
is of Dutch origin too.
It's a -long- tradition,
going back to Mercator and Blaeuw.

So much for the Obaue bit...

I just got through calculating fuel costs and mileage on my
rent-a-car. This was an eye-opener in unexpected directions. We
Californians feel very superior to Europeans because we drive very
green cars. Specifically the number of Toyota Prius Hybrids on our
roads makes us feel so much holier than thou. I don't think I saw a
single Prius while in Europe - how backwards can they be over there?

Nonsense. You can see one in every big parking lot,
if you really look for them.
There is a tax cut to encourage their use.
(looked: a popular Dutch second hand site finds 450 of them for sale)
They do have the drawback that they can't tow a trailer,
not even a tiny one.
(If you have seen the 'white flood' in summer
on the autoroute du soleil for example you'll understand
why it's considered a drawback)

Lemme tell ya.

I just happened to go to Hertz at Amsterdam Airport and, (given
the experience of last time when their definition of "compact"
matched my definition of "itty bitty car that can't take 2 people
and their suitcases) ordered a decent zized car. Turned out to be a
Peugeot 407 station wagon - nice comfortable size - think of just
a little larger maybe than what a Toyota Corolla station wagon
would look like if they made one.

Indeeed a big one by European standards.
Generally speaking cars longer than about 4.50 m
don't sell very well.
The comparable Peugeot 307 for example is a bestseller at about 4m40,
the 407 at about 4m70 doesn't sell as well.

Off the bat - I didn't realise it was a diesel until the first time I
had to fill up - it made neither diesel noises nor smell. It had a 2
liter engine and sported 136 horsepower - quite adequate,
never noticed any diesel-sluggishness.

Common rail and computer controlled injection really helps.
Peugeot has been building very good diesels for a long time,
and many of the diesels you find in other makes are really peugeots.
The reason was the expensive petrol in France.

The American motor industry is really backward.
They have lacked an incentive to innovate for too long.
Whatever diesel they make is usually just another cylinder head
and fuel pump fitted to a petrol engine,
which makes an underpowered and dirty engine.

I drove it just under 1000 miles with maybe a 50/50 mixture of
freeway and downtown stop-n-go. Bottom line at the end was
43.96 miles per gallon!

About 6 l/100 km (or 15 km/l) in Euro units. Not bad.

This car put put just about everything we have on the road here
to shame, even the Prius, and without all the hi-tech hassle of
batteries and 2 motive sources and planetary gears and so
forth.

Not quite fair: diesel does have a higher energy content per liter.
A petrol powered 407 would have used about 10 l/100 km. (10 km/l)

But then (converting money and volumes as appropriate) I paid
an average of US$8.73 per American gallon for diesel. Ouch.

Americans should have introduced fuel taxes -long- ago
instead of wasting cheap subsidized fuel.
As it is, Americans still buy too cheap fuel
below an economically justifiable price.
(based on low historic costs instead of the cost of new exploration)

The car came eqipped with a glass cockpit. Small video screen
in the center of the dashboard. Tune the radio and it shows you
the frequency, name of station, and volume you just adjusted it to.

And better than that: it can track a given station,
switching automatically to the strongest transmitter
carrying it.

Fiddle with the airconditioning and it shows you the climate settings
for left and right front seats, outside and inside temp and humidity.
Press the "nav" button, and there is a full-fledged GPS (Tomtom,
SatNav) covering all of Europe, it can show both 2D and 3D maps and
guide you to your destination with voice commands in the language
of your choice. (That is - once you figure out the user-interface
for entering your destination). It led me flawlessly in and around
some big cities with nary a scew up. At one point, approaching
the ouskirts of Berlin, we couldn't take the freeway-exit indicated
because it was blocked for road repairs. Within 50 yards it had
figured out that the trurn had been missed and promptly adjusted
its routing to a new route. Three times on that trip we could not
take the turn it suggested (road repairs, road blocked for a parade,
etc) and yet it still got us to our destination without a sweat.

Effing marvelous.

The only problem with this arrangement is that they have digital
radio in Europe, and emergency broadcasts (road conditions)
over-rode both the video-screen and the audio.

There is a setting for that, you can turn it off.
And it isn't really digital radio,
it's just a extra few bits of info sqeezed in
on top of a standard FM stereo signal.

So there you are,
approaching a big freeway interchange, listening to BBC in the
backgound, relying on the displayed map and voice commands
breaking in occasionaly to guide you and...

Blam! Achtung! Achtung! The screen display is replaced with
a notice telling you that you are receiving an emergency broadcast,
(duh!) and the audio is over-ridden with a rapid-fire voice telling
you that the left lane is blocked by a car on fire some 50 miles
away on a completely different freeway... and then having broken
in, they go on yammering at you about where the speed cameras
are located today and end up with a commercial. Meanwhile, you
went sailing through your freeway interchange totally without
benefit of intelligent navigation. Jeez - how to snatch defeat
from the jaws of victory.

Your mistake, you should have disabled it.
(there is a button marked TA for that)

The drawback to all this nice high tech
is that you realy have to read a big manual
to use it properly.
(which you won't do for just a rented car)

Best,

Jan

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