Google Maps: sustainable travel is coming to Europe

Google Maps offers its eco-friendly routes in Europe. It also becomes possible to enter the engine type of your car.

Last October, Google added new eco-friendly routes to its Maps mapping and navigation service. In the United States, you can now choose a route that takes into account aspects such as traffic congestion and the most suitable lanes for fuel economy. As part of their Maps announcement, Google explains that the feature will be available in “nearly 40″countries in Europe, unfortunately without providing an exact list. Google has previously added this feature in Canada and Germany.

Google Maps offers its eco-friendly routes in Europe

Just like in the United States, these trips are rarely the fastest you can imagine, so you will have to choose whether you really need to get to your destination quickly or not. In either case, Google Maps will show you both routes, and the greener option will be chosen by default when the overall time difference is very small. But if you still want to keep the fastest route as the default, you can set this behavior in your Google Maps settings.

It also becomes possible to enter the engine type of your car

Either way, whether you’re using the feature in the US, Canada, or Europe, Google also offers a setting that lets you tell the app which vehicle you’re driving. In this way, you can indicate that your car uses gasoline or diesel fuel, or that it is a hybrid or all-electric car. This information will affect the proposed routes, although we do not know exactly to what extent.

As is often the case with Google updates, this new feature will be rolled out gradually over the coming days/weeks. A little patience if you don’t see this option on your Google Maps.