Google Maps now allows you to spec hybrid-style car, pick most fuel efficient route

Sounds like a gimmick to me.
The laws of physics aren't different for a hybrid vehicle.......
So if you wanted a fuel efficient route, the type of vehicle shouldn't matter.

 

The laws of physics do treat different fuels differently.

Per the article:

Another example would be EVs being much more efficient in city traffic than highways.

 

Explain the EPA ratings then.

 

This is what I have been wanting but I prefer Waze.

So I took a look and changed my vehicle to electric and it does the same thing as google.

I think people are getting confused and do not understand that it has nothing to do with your actual car but the terrain for economy.

Thank you Mendel for talking about something new google just did and making me wonder if waze already did it.

Also if I check, I may have contacted Waze a while ago and asked them to do it, but I never checked until now.

 

Thanks for this... I'll try it on next road trip... It'll be interesting to see if re-routing is different based on engine type next time I'm in Seattle or SF Bay area.

Of course as previously discussed, viable re-routing is only effective in places with abundant populations that are actively sending data and if you're far away from a major population center you won't enjoy the flaws in the system which has killed people in the past, but Google and Apple got good lawyers, so it's not an issue for them.

 

Two entirely different subjects.
The EPA does not test different kinds of vehicles on differing routes to see if a particular design does better on some roads than others.

You have been sucked into the marketing hype.

The GPS is mounted in only ONE vehicle.......which uses only ONE kind of fuel or one combination.
A more efficient route is more efficient no matter what kind of vehicle it IS.

 

There are two core EPA test cycles. One is low speed with lots of stops, and the other (somewhat)faster with fewer stops. These cycles were based upon roads in the real world.

Low, constant speeds are good for fuel efficiency. Stops introduce decelerations, idling, and re-accelerations that drag down that efficiency in an ICE car. A hybrid mitigates those consequences. It is seen in those EPA tests.

These mapping apps are not simply digital versions of a paper map. The routing algorithms know the number of stops and posted speed limits when calculating a route. Tell it that the route is for an ICE car, and it will choose a way with fewer stops than if it is for a hybrid. It isn't a gimmick.

When I got the Outback a year ago, the Tom Tom based factory navigation had an efficient route selection. Google maps seemed to get it around then too. Didn't look into whether there was a car type choice then.

An efficient route will be efficient no matter the car, most of the time. But choose hybrid, and it might take you down a shorter road with multiple stops, instead of the longer one without them that would have been better for your ICE car. A more technical selection would be asking if the car has auto stop/start, regen braking, and engine off coasting instead of ICE or hybrid. Could even ask for the EPA ratings of the specific car.

 

Hills make another difference. Although flat would be nice for all car types, when there are hills involved, the car types differ.

After buying potential energy going up a hill, your conventional car can only make limited use of the energy you bought on the next downhill. As long as it's no more than you can turn into momentum while keeping speed reasonable, great, but more than that you can only brake (or engine-brake) off. In a hybrid you get to keep more of what you bought.

That could be enough of a difference to inform a good algorithm when choosing between different, not-perfectly-flat routes.

 

But it does reveal that some vehicles get their best efficiency scores in highway-like conditions, while others do best in city-like conditions.

A check moments ago, to a specific destination I sometimes take into Seattle for medical specialists, recommended one route for gassers, and a different route for hybrids and EVs. Ironically, it points hybrids and EVs to the freeway, currently very seriously congested and slow with pre-lunch traffic, while sending the gasser on a city arterial route, lots more traffic lights but currently far less congested. Right now, the arterial route through those many extra traffic lights is several minutes quicker than the congested freeway route.

BTW, I found this engine-type option only on the mobile app, not the PC website.

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P.S. As lunchtime traffic increases, conditions are changing rapidly. Now, a lesser second arterial route is both quicker and more efficient for both gassers and hybrids-EVs than either of the previous routes.