Last year, Google added support for showing eco-friendly and fuel-efficient routes to its Google Maps app in the United States.
At that time, Google promised to expand that support to more countries. Now, Google is finally rolling out that support in Germany.
According to the Google team’s post on its blog, there are reasons why this support is present in Germany, one of which is the increase in fuel prices.
Another reason is that the tech giant looked at Google Trends which showed that search queries from users in Germany about “saving gas or fuel” had increased by 338 percent over the previous year.
In addition to showing the length of the route, this feature will include other factors such as road slope and traffic congestion in the calculation. Thus, this information will help optimize the potential for fuel consumption.
Google says that you can adjust your preferences in the settings to choose the fastest route, regardless of fuel consumption, or choose a fuel-efficient route with the same arrival time.
In addition, by launching a fuel-efficient route in Germany, Google is also testing the option to determine the type of engine of your vehicle, whether it is gasoline, diesel, hybrid, or electric.
This information allows Google to create more optimal fuel-efficient route guidance, as the percentage of savings and the recommended route may vary depending on the vehicle engine.
Using artificial intelligence and insights from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Google estimates that fuel-efficient routes on Google Maps have the potential to avoid more than one million tonnes of CO2 emissions globally each year.
“Since the introduction of fuel-efficient routes on Google Maps in the US and Canada, reducing CO2 emissions has been equivalent to pulling 100,000 cars off the road,” Google said on its blog.
The fuel-efficient route will soon be introduced in Germany and will be available to all Google Maps users (iOS and Android) in the coming weeks.
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