Google Maps adds EV route planning feature that’ll be familiar to Tesla drivers

When planning a long trip with an electric car, finding charging stations can be cumbersome. Unless you have a Tesla, that is. They calculate your stops based on where you’re going and how much juice you’ll have left in the battery. 

From Wednesday, electric cars using Google software, like the Polestar 2 and Volvo XC40 Recharge, will feature an updated navigation system from Google Maps to help you plan charging stops too.

It’s known as EV route planning, and it will help you find you the most efficient route. It calculates where you should stop along the way to recharge based on your battery range when you’re planning the trip — and also how much time you’ll have to spend at the charging station. It also considers what type of charger you’ll use (fast or regular, which is known as Level 2) and charger availability. 

You no longer have to do the math on how many miles between charging stations and if your battery will make it that far. And because this is Google Maps, you can see nearby shops and food options near each charging stop.

Tesla has always done this, displaying its Supercharger network on the Tesla navigation screen for trip planning. Even Apple Maps introduced EV routing with iOS 14 last year.

On a sample European road trip from Berlin to Paris you can see how Google Maps tries to make the EV journey in a car with 250-mile range as efficient as a gas-powered one. 

It comes close, but it takes 10 hours and 59 minutes with an internal combustion engine (the left image) compared to 11 hours and 14 minutes with an EV including multiple charge points along the way (each white dot represents a charging stop). 

For other EV drivers who don’t have a Polestar or XC40 Recharge, Google Maps on your phone and Android Auto or Apple CarPlay still shows you nearby charging stations and availability, but it won’t be able to calculate which station you should go to based on your battery’s real-time status. Just search “charging station” or “EV” in Google Maps and nearby choices pop up.

Google also said Wednesday it plans to have Google Maps built into more car navigation systems eventually. 

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