We’re 15 minutes out of town and our electronic tour guide has said nothing. Then as we reach the village of Lusigny-sur-Barse he suddenly comes to life and tells us, in an impeccable English accent, all about the Automata Museum, its exhibits and the owner.

He certainly makes it sound worth a stop. Then a few miles down the road we pass through Montiéramey and learn from our educated friend that the red roofs we can see on most of the houses are a local tradition, though the old brickworks in the village has now closed down. After a slow start our hitch-hiker is proving very useful.

His name is Hoppy, and we picked him up at the tourist office in Troyes, in the Aube-en-Champagne region about 100 miles southeast of Paris. Hoppy was invented by a local man, Jean-Michel Adelaide, and is being road-tested in the region.

At the moment it is merely a hitch-hiker’s guide to parts of Aube-en-Champagne, but how long before it covers the galaxy? In fact, given how long GPS technology has been around, it’s astonishing that nobody seems to have come up with something as simple as Hoppy before. The device is about the size of a Walkman, though the aim is to get it down to mobile-phone dimensions. It uses global positioning satellites to work out where it is, and this triggers a talking guidebook that tells you what you’re passing, something about the town you’re driving into, or some entertaining facts about champagne. Aube-en-Champagne is France’s second largest champagne-producing area, and many visitors drive the champagne route.

Troyes Technology University was established in 1994, and Jean-Michel Adelaide was one of its early graduates. In 1999 he set up a company called Actual to develop his idea for the Hoppy. He named it after the French nickname for a grasshopper, because it gives you short bursts of information and enables you to hop in and out of the car, taking Hoppy with you. By 2002 a French-only version was ready to hit the road, and this year Dutch and English options were added. The information is stored as MP3 files inside Hoppy, which can hold up to 70 hours of commentaries. The whole device weighs 10oz and sits on top of the dashboard. You also get a portable speaker and an audio jack enabling you to link Hoppy to your car stereo or to a personal stereo if you want to take it out of the car with you. Hoppy is also aimed at walkers and cyclists.

It could be used to provide town tours, or information about churches and museums.

The potential is enormous, but how does it work in practice? The controls are simple. First choose your language. Then there is a “themes” option, the aim being that you can choose what interests you, for example wine tours or architecture, though at the moment “general” is the only choice. Then you leave Hoppy to lock onto the satellites and wait for the all important “Hoppy is ready” message.

Maybe he was just having a bad air day, but it took a good 10-15 minutes for Hoppy to pick up the signals that enable him to work out where he was. Reception is better if you open the car window, which could be a problem on a cold or rainy day.

By the time Hoppy was ready, we were bowling along the N19 out of Troyes. Hoppy currently works on about 250 miles of roads in the popular tourist area east of Troyes. Some 150 miles of those roads cover the champagne-growing area, with Hoppy giving information about champagne and some of the major houses. Nobody pays to be included in the device’s tourist information. The selections are made by the local tourist department, who also provide the text, which is very well read by local actors.

Currently Hoppy must be picked up and dropped off at the tourist office in Troyes, but by the summer other tourist offices in the region will be renting it out. Then the plan is to bring the region’s hotels into the scheme, to make Hoppy a familiar sight in the Aube area. Actual is also selling the rights for Hoppy to be used in other regions of France, throughout Europe and in America.

Hoppy will have to be better behaved than he was on our trip, though. When he worked, he worked well. It was pleasant to be driving along through the vineyards hearing how champagne is made, or to pass a historical monument and hear about what it commemorates.

On the other hand, there is not a lot of text in the English version, resulting in long periods of silence from our new chum. Apparently there is much more information in the original French version that has not yet been translated.

Hoppy doesn’t always know if he is coming or going either. Once or twice, only when we were leaving a town would the commentary kick in, resulting in us hearing all about the wonderful buildings and interesting churches as the town receded behind us.

Hoppy also let us down on what was going to be the high point of the day out, a visit to the town of Essoyes, where Renoir lived for 30 years, where his studio can be visited, a Renoir trail followed, and his grave seen in the local churchyard. Hoppy remained stubbornly silent the whole time. He sprang back to life once we’d left Essoyes to head back to Troyes.

We got to like Hoppy, who seemed to enjoy interrupting us every time we started chatting, though if you miss anything you can always replay the last segment. You can also stop him when you need to concentrate, like the moment we found ourselves faced with an unexpected detour sign and needed to focus on the map.

But no doubt in a few years, devices such as Hoppy will be commonplace in cars and able to tell us not only how to deal with the detour but play La Marseillaise and find the sauerkraut festival too. Hoppy doesn’t yet cover the sauerkraut route — another local product — but it’s surely only a matter of time.

How Hoppy Works

The Hoppy unit contains an MP3 which is programmed with up to 70 hours of commentary and information about tourist sites and historical points of interest.

Battery powered or plugged into the cigarette lighter, Hoppy works in conjunction with the sophisticated satellite Global Positioning System (GPS), which can pinpoint the car’s location.

As the driver approaches one of the listed sites, Hoppy is alerted by the GPS and is able to recite relevant information about the area’s history or the local tourist attractions.

Hoppy costs €10 (£6.25) per day to rent plus a €200 deposit. Available from the Office de Tourisme, 16 boulevard Carnot, Troyes (0033 3 25 82 62 70). Further information on Hoppy at www.hoppy.info