Worth knowing, however, is that the eco-friendly routes only make sense in gas and diesel cars, so if you’re driving an EV, the data provided by Google Maps is obviously useless.Īt the same time, it’s important to remember that fuel-efficient routes could sometimes be longer than the fastest siblings, all because they get you on routes where the mileage is higher. Until now, Google Maps defaulted to the fastest route, so this was the only way the application looked for a way to reach a user-defined destination.Īll of these help Google Maps determine an estimate of your fuel consumption to reach your destination, and if it’s substantially lower than the fastest route, you should see an eco-friendly alternative before you start navigating. Of course, it’s not a flawless system, but it’s most of the time pretty accurate, with millions of drivers running Google Maps (and therefore contributing with traffic data) on a regular basis.

So what Google Maps does is try to determine the shortest route to your destination, but if it comes across any sections of the road that could slow you down due to traffic jams, accidents, or things like that, it then tries to re-route the navigation and use an alternative with a shorter ETA. The only difference is that Google Maps is often more accurate than all its rivals, simply because it collects data from multiple sources, including even Waze, the traffic navigation app also owned by Google. Right now, Google Maps provides users with the fastest route to a defined destination using pretty much the same approach as all the navigation apps out there.

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