Saving fuel is a noble goal — not just for your wallet, but for the world in general. And that’s exactly what Google Maps tries to do by default. Every time you start navigation, it quietly picks the most fuel-efficient route it can find.
The only problem is that those good intentions don’t always translate to good routes. Sometimes, this same feature can throw you onto a back road or cost you a few extra minutes just to save you a handful of cents.
How Google Maps’ fuel-efficient routing actually works
A lot goes into it
For years, Google Maps has always shown the fastest route from point A to B. But that’s not the case anymore. Google Maps now favors fuel efficient routes by default, which sounds great, but it also means you’re not getting the fastest route to your destination, at least not all the time.
Let’s start with how it works. Google Maps’s fuel-efficient routing isn’t some basic feature that only looks at distance, traffic, and time. The algorithm actually considers a lot of things under the hood. For instance, it takes into account what type of vehicle you’re driving — electric, combustion engine, or gas-powered motorcycle — and matches your vehicle’s fuel or energy consumption to the route.
It also factors in the route type. If it’s a highway, you’ll obviously need to stop less, so the efficiency will be higher. The savings can vary by engine type too. Diesel vehicles have a relative fuel economy advantage on open roads. Hybrid and electric vehicles tend to do better in cities and on hilly terrain, where they can benefit from regenerative braking. Google Maps also considers all these details. And if you haven’t specified the engine type at all in Google Maps settings, it simply assumes the most common engine type in your country.
In practice, what the algorithm is really trying to do is favor routes with steady acceleration, consistent speeds, and minimal breaking. That means a smooth highway will typically win over crawling through city lights. The good thing here is that Google Maps only suggests the eco-friendly route when it has roughly the same arrival time as the fastest one.
Disabling fuel-efficient routing makes more sense
It’s a noble idea, but it can backfire
Google Maps’ fuel-efficient routing sounds handy, but for most people, those savings rarely justify the trade-offs. The algorithm often optimizes for marginal efficiency gain that, in day-to-day driving, only translates to cents per trip. Another point I’ve seen people on Reddit make is that the fuel-efficient algorithm sometimes pushes Google Maps to suggest roads that are less ideal, narrower, or both. Saving a few drops of fuel while squeezing through a back alley isn’t exactly a great trade.
There’s also the time cost. Google Maps frames the eco route as having “roughly the same time to arrive” as the fastest route, but “roughly” is doing a lot of work here. A two or three-minute difference in a fifteen-minute drive isn’t nothing, at least for someone who’s driving around all day.
The only time I feel this feature makes sense is if you’re doing long highway trips regularly and have actually set your engine type correctly in Maps. For everyone else, especially for those making short hops, the fastest route is almost always the better call.
The good news is that Google Maps does give you a way out. If you want it to stick to the fastest route possible, head to Settings > Navigation, and turn off Prefer fuel-efficient routes under Route options. That’s it. Google Maps will now default to the fastest route by default. This doesn’t lock you out of eco routing entirely. Any time fuel-efficient routes are available, Maps will show them too. Those will have a green leaf icon above them, so you can still pick them whenever you’re confident about what it’s offering.
Other Google Maps settings that can speed up your trips
If getting to your destination quickly is your priority, you honestly shouldn’t stop at disabling fuel-efficient routing. First, check if Avoid toll roads toggle is turned off under navigation settings, since tollways are usually the fastest option on longer drives. Of course, this depends a lot on where you live, the trip, and how expensive those tolls are, so there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for this one.
If you’re planning a trip in advance and have some flexibility, you can also try different departure times. Maps can factor in typical traffic patterns for each time slot and give you a more realistic ETA. The time savings between different departure windows can sometimes be huge.
Finally, skip offline maps for everyday navigation. They’re great for saving data and absolutely make sense in places where internet is spotty or unavailable. But for most situations, they’re a no-go — offline maps don’t account for live traffic, so you’re largely relying on historical data, which isn’t always helpful.