Omovo Thinking Open. Thinking Mobile.

Mobile Internet meets Peugeot 308Posted by Jeff on February 23rd, 2009

Where would I be without mobile internet? Probably still sitting at a petrol station somewhere along the M1.

While attempting to drive back to London I became aware that my rented Peugeot 308 was running a bit dry on windshield washer fluid (albeit not because it warned me of this, it has no windshield wiper fluid warning light as it turns out!). Off I pulled into the roadside station to pick up some wiper fluid thinking this should be a relatively simple task – you know, buy wiper fluid, open hood, open wiper fluid, pour into fluid container. Not so much. 10 minutes later I was still walking around the car trying to find the lever to crack open the hood. While I am no mechanic, I like to think I checked the spots this lever would typically be:

• A lever underneath the steering wheel.
• A button under the arm rest in the centre console.
• A button on the side of the driver seat.
• A button inside the glove box.
• A lever on the passenger side underneath the glove box.
• A button in the trunk. (yes I know, a stretch, but I was getting desperate!).

Always the last thing to check of course, but I did also try and check the instruction manual. However, as luck may have it the rental company conveniently did not include it as part of the package.

Finally after becoming somewhat disgruntled that I could not find something as simple as the hood opener I got back in the car and thought about what to do next.  Then, eureka!  Google was clearly the answer – through the magic of mobile internet there may still be hope for me to get the windshield wiper fluid filled up!

I picked up my Blackberry and typed into Google: “hood opener peugeot 308”.

Results: nothing of any interest.

Frustrated at first, I then came to the realization of my perhaps North American centric search terms, and swapped out “hood” for “bonnet”.

Bingo.

Up came a few sites, all of which went on to complain about the lack of a windshield wiper warning light as well as the location of the “bonnet” opener.  Which, as it turns out, is conveniently located in a virtually invisible lever in the border of the door frame on the passenger side of the vehicle.  Hallelujah, the bonnet is open and my windshield wiper reservoir is filled up!

In the absence of mobile internet and Google, where would this answer have come from?  I probably could have found a number from the rental company to call and, assuming they were still open, perhaps I could have been connected to someone who knew the answer. I would hope so, but thats probably optimistic. Another alternative would be to find someone at the petrol station who knew the Peugeot’s more subtle details, or to call someone who could have checked the internet on my behalf to answer the question. Whether any of these solutions would have given me the answer I was looking for is up for argument but no doubt they all would have taken more time and quite likely led me to the decision that wiper fluid wasn’t all that critical and I could make it the remaining 20 miles home by leveraging the spray of cars in front of me to clean my windshield. Clearly not a great option – so needless to say I am pleased to have found yet another useful application of mobile internet – finding out how to open a bonnet on a Peugeot 308.