GOOGLE MAPS CAN SAVE TIME AND MONEY

Google is on a roll with it’s eco drive.

Last year, Google Maps began offering an alternative way to navigate your car from one place to another. Where typically a navigation app optimizes for the shortest travel time, Google Maps started offering routes that would be more fuel-efficient and eco-friendly, even defaulting to that route if the ETA is similar.

However, not all vehicles behave the same way or can optimize fuel efficiency with the same methods. While gas-powered vehicles are still all too common in the United States, there’s a growing number of hybrids and electric vehicles on the road, and quite a few diesel-powered ones as well. Suffice it to say the most efficient route for a traditional ICE car will not be the same as one for an electric.

To that end, the latest beta update to Google Maps, version 11.39, includes preparations to specify the engine type of the vehicle you’re currently driving. This selection — with options for gas, diesel, electric, and hybrid — will be used by Google Maps to “tailor” your navigation to find what will “save you the most fuel or energy.”

Individuals may not see a huge impact, but the it’s a well known rule in consulting that ‘lots of changes of little consequence can make big change’. So the more people that make use of routing like this, and at Google Maps scale that is a lot, can help do their change of little consequence.

Just a shame you can’t set Google Maps as default for mapping or navigation on iOS.