By default, the Routes API returns the default route, meaning a route without factoring in fuel or energy-efficiency. When you enable eco-friendly routing, you still get the default route in the response. In addition, you also get back an eco-friendly route showing the most fuel- or energy-efficient route based on your vehicle's engine type.
The eco-friendly route returned by the Routes API is optimized for lower fuel consumption over the entire route. The API uses your vehicle's engine type along with other factors such as real-time traffic and road conditions to choose the eco-friendly route. The more fuel or energy-efficient the route, the lower your car's fuel/energy usage and CO2 emissions.
For example, a diesel vehicle's relative fuel economy advantage is generally greatest in highway driving. Hybrid and electric vehicles tend to provide progressively greater efficiency in stop-and-go city driving and hilly driving environments where they can extensively use and benefit from regenerative braking.
You can also request that the API returns the estimated fuel consumption for the entire route. Use the fuel consumption estimates as a way to compare different routes, not as explicit fuel usage estimates for your exact vehicle.
How Google Maps estimates fuel efficiency
The Routes API estimates fuel-efficiency using insights from the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and data from the European Environment Agency. This calculation includes factors that affect your fuel and energy usage and CO2 emissions, such as:
- Average fuel or energy consumption for vehicles in your region
- Steepness of hills on your route
- Stop-and-go traffic patterns
- Types of roads (such as local roads or highways)
The Routes API returns the most fuel or energy-efficient route when it has roughly the same arrival time as the default route. In cases where fuel or energy savings are too small or increase driving time significantly, the API shows relative fuel or energy savings between routes to help you compare.
Read more about eco-friendly routing technology (PDF).
Prerequisites
To use eco-friendly routing or estimate fuel consumption:
You must specify
TRAFFIC_AWARE_OPTIMAL
as the routing preference. In this mode, the server performs a more exhaustive search of the road network to find the optimal route. For more information, see Configure quality vs latency.You must set
travelMode
toDRIVE
. Requests for any other travel mode return an error.You must set a location for the origin waypoint in a supported region. Otherwise, the API returns an error.
The route cannot contain an intermediate waypoint.
Billing
Typically, Google Maps Platform does not charge for the use of a Preview
feature. However, because eco-friendly routing and estimating fuel consumption
requires that you specify TRAFFIC_AWARE_OPTIMAL
as the routing preference, you
are charged based on the SKU: Routes
Advanced.
Learn more about billing for Routes API.
Request an eco-friendly route
To make a request to compute an eco-friendly route, set the following properties in the request:
Specify
emissionType
for the vehicle using the values defined in VehicleEmissionType:DIESEL
,GASOLINE
,ELECTRIC
, orHYBRID
. The default value isGASOLINE
.Set
requestedReferenceRoutes
toFUEL_EFFICIENT
.Set a response field mask that specifies to return the response properties associated with an eco-friendly route:
routes.routeLabels:
Identifies each route as eitherDEFAULT_ROUTE
,FUEL_EFFICIENT
, orDEFAULT_ROUTE_ALTERNATE
.routes.routeToken:
A route token that you can pass to the Navigation SDK to retrieve a custom route.
Example eco-friendly request
The following code shows a request for an eco-friendly route. In this example,
you use the response field mask to return response properties associated with an
eco-friendly route along with the routes.distanceMeters
and
routes.duration
properties:
curl -X POST -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{ "origin": { "location": { "latLng": { "latitude": 41.76904801292959, "longitude": -72.67374935684933 } } }, "destination": { "location": { "latLng": { "latitude": 41.823042361105024, "longitude": -71.40933143059424 } } }, "routeModifiers": { "vehicleInfo": { "emissionType": "GASOLINE" } }, "travelMode":"DRIVE", "routingPreference": "TRAFFIC_AWARE_OPTIMAL", "requestedReferenceRoutes": ["FUEL_EFFICIENT"] }' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \ -H 'X-Goog-FieldMask: routes.distanceMeters,routes.duration,routes.routeLabels,routes.routeToken' \ 'https://routes.googleapis.com/directions/v2:computeRoutes'
Example eco-friendly response
The computeRoutes
call above generates a JSON response that contains
two routes: the default route and the fuel efficient route. In the response:
For the default route, the
routeLabels
array property containsDEFAULT_ROUTE
.For the eco-friendly route, the
routeLabels
array property containsFUEL_EFFICIENT
.If you set
computeAlternativeRoutes
in the request totrue
to calculate alternate routes, therouteLabels
array property containsDEFAULT_ROUTE_ALTERNATE
.
{ "routes": [ { "distanceMeters": 138939, "duration": "5412s", "routeToken": "CoYJCpoIC…0n9S1cu", "routeLabels": [ "DEFAULT_ROUTE" ] }, { "distanceMeters": 116887, "duration": "5631s", "routeToken": "CuEHCu0G…xqm", "routeLabels": [ "FUEL_EFFICIENT" ] } ] }
Because of current driving conditions and other factors, the default route and
the eco-friendly route can be the same. In this case, routeLabels
contains
both labels: DEFAULT_ROUTE
and FUEL_EFFICIENT
:
{ "routes": [ { "distanceMeters": 45875, "duration": "2655s", "routeToken": "CvcDCos…6I40", "routeLabels": [ "DEFAULT_ROUTE", "FUEL_EFFICIENT" ] } ] }
Estimate fuel usage for the route
You can request the method to return the estimated fuel usage for the entire route, in microliters. To add the estimated fuel usage for a route to the response:
Set the
extraComputations
array field toFUEL_CONSUMPTION
to enable the fuel usage calculation.Specify
emissionType
for the vehicle using the values defined in VehicleEmissionType:DIESEL
,GASOLINE
,ELECTRIC
, orHYBRID
. The default value isGASOLINE
.If the
emissionType
isHYBRID
, the API converts electricity and fuel consumption to microliters of fuel.If the
emissionType
isELECTRIC
, the API converts electricity consumption to microliters of fuel.Set a response field mask that specifies to return the response properties associated with fuel usage:
routes.travelAdvisory.fuelConsumptionMicroliters
.
The following example requests estimated fuel usage as part of a request that also includes the eco-friendly route:
curl -X POST -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{ "origin": { "location": { "latLng": { "latitude": 41.76904801292959, "longitude": -72.67374935684933 } } }, "destination": { "location": { "latLng": { "latitude": 41.823042361105024, "longitude": -71.40933143059424 } } }, "routeModifiers": { "vehicleInfo": { "emissionType": "GASOLINE" } }, "travelMode":"DRIVE", "routingPreference": "TRAFFIC_AWARE_OPTIMAL", "extraComputations": ["FUEL_CONSUMPTION"], "requestedReferenceRoutes": ["FUEL_EFFICIENT"] }' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \ -H 'X-Goog-FieldMask: routes.distanceMeters,routes.duration,routes.routeLabels,routes.routeToken,routes.travelAdvisory.fuelConsumptionMicroliters' \ 'https://routes.googleapis.com/directions/v2:computeRoutes'
The response contains the estimated fuel consumption for both the default route and for the eco-friendly route:
{ "routes": [ { "distanceMeters": 138939, "duration": "5412s", "travelAdvisory": { "fuelConsumptionMicroliters": "11019554" }, "routeToken": "CoYJCpoIC…0n9S1cu", "routeLabels": [ "DEFAULT_ROUTE" ] }, { "distanceMeters": 116887, "duration": "5631s", "travelAdvisory": { "fuelConsumptionMicroliters": "9572436" }, "routeToken": "CuEHCu0G…xqm", "routeLabels": [ "FUEL_EFFICIENT" ] } ] }
Supported regions
The Google Maps Platform team is constantly working to improve international coverage for our API services. The following list shows the latest coverage details, on a country-by-country basis, for eco-friendly routing:
- Albania (AL)
- Austria (AT)
- Belgium (BE)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA)
- Bulgaria (BG)
- Canada (CA)
- Croatia (HR)
- Cyprus (CY)
- Czechia (CZ)
- Denmark (DK)
- Estonia (EE)
- Finland (FI)
- France (FR)
- Germany (DE)
- Greece (GR)
- Hungary (HU)
- Iceland (IS)
- Ireland (IE)
- Italy (IT)
- Kosovo (XK)
- Latvia (LV)
- Liechtenstein (LI)
- Lithuania (LT)
- Luxembourg (LU)
- Malta (MT)
- Montenegro (ME)
- Netherlands (NL)
- North Macedonia (MK)
- Norway (NO)
- Poland (PL)
- Portugal (PT)
- Romania (RO)
- Serbia (RS)
- Slovakia (SK)
- Slovenia (SI)
- Spain (ES)
- Sweden (SE)
- Switzerland (CH)
- Turkey (TR)
- United Kingdom (GB)
- United States (US)