Google Maps brings eco-friendly routes to Europe

Increases in fuel prices have made the daily life of millions of citizens around the world particularly difficult, so it might be quite interesting to know how you can reach your destination with a few minutes delay if you could at the same time reduce the consumption of your vehicle.

This was undoubtedly not Google's motivation when it moved forward last year to integrate eco-friendly routes into the Google Maps service. Still, as developments have brought, this is also an important reason beyond environmental protection. The specific routes are shown on the map with the leaf icon and you can activate them by going to Settings -> Navigation Settings -> Route Options -> Prefer fuel-efficient routes.

The company started testing the eco-friendly routes last year in the US and Canada and is officially announcing its launch in Europe (in fact in an additional 40 countries worldwide). It enriches the options by allowing users to declare the engine type of their vehicle for an even more efficient solution (oil, gas, petrol, hybrid, or electric).

It is worth sacrificing a few minutes of our time both to save fuel and to protect the environment. After all, Google claims that with the implementation of eco-friendly routes last year, carbon emissions were reduced to a percentage corresponding to that of 100 thousand cars.