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Comment by prewett | Hacker News Reader

This is a great example of why I figured Google Maps for navigation. I don't use Maps to express my environmental values, I use it to get from A to B the fastest way. If they default to something else, they are actively getting in the way of why I would use their product. I have no interest in activist software.

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I have no issue with this. The bigger issue I have with Google Maps is that it makes zero effort to avoid dangerous routes. If two routes for a ~45 min drive are within 30 seconds of another, why would I want to risk death by taking the one with an extremely dangerous left turn through oncoming traffic? It makes zero sense.

This looks like a governmental issue in my eyes: it's the government's responsibility to ensure that the roads are reasonable safe and the traffic reasonable regulated, not Google's. If a route is dangerous, something should be done with the route itself (not the suggestion). But if Maps' suggestions breaks regulations and propose an illegal route, I agree!

The roads are mostly reasonable and safe. There are always going to be turns and intersections that are more difficult than the others. Google (and every other consumer map provider for that matter) has a habit of picking unnecessarily complex routes to shave a few seconds. Unnecessarily routing through difficult intersections and using a dozen side streets to cut the corner off a route are just specific examples of that.

You've noticed Google Maps do this? I personally find Google will take the simpler routes even if sometimes a faster route comes up while driving. Sometimes on a longer drive I'll see it is showing a greyed out route I could take that is sometimes even 5-10 minutes faster but it won't suggest it to me.

No whereas with Waze it is a lot more aggressive and it will take faster routes and shortcuts even if it means taking a gravel road to save 30 seconds.

But what you’re saying is all roads that technically conform to standards are equal in safety or should be. That does not seem realistic or practical. For example windy mountain roads vs urban freeways. Or unprotected left turns versus protected left turns. Should unprotected left turns be made illegal.

Why can’t a third party routing software assess safety? It’s not a realistic expectation to expect all roads to be equivalent in safety.

> [...] it's the government's responsibility to ensure that the roads are reasonable safe [...]

Even if you agree with that, it's still not the governments responsibility to make all possible routes exactly equally safe. (That's actually not possible, for any non-zero level of risk.)

So even if the overall risk was low and in some sense reasonable, you might still want to pick the less risky route.

Also keep in mind that different people have different risk appetites.

Where and when does the driver's responsibility come into play? Do we not have a social contract of following rules we already agreed on, or set by the Gov? What else did you want Gov to do?

> they are actively getting in the way of why I would use their product

No they aren't. They're being completely transparent about this and giving you the option to keep the old behavior with a one-time settings change. So what's the problem exactly?

Google also explicitly says that it only does it when the ETAs are very close, so realistically, it will still be doing what you want. It feels pretty extreme to write such an angry comment about maybe getting a route than 1-2% slower.

Wasn't intended to be angry. It's more frustration that I used to love Google Maps, but over the years it just gets less and less useful. I can't see street names like I used to, for instance. Now I have to have the overhead of choosing a route, when I used to know that the default is the fastest. Sure, I can turn it off in settings. But at what point does this get to be Windows Explorer, where the first thing I do on a new Windows install is invert pretty much all the settings?

I guess maybe I'd like a little bit of say in how the software I use gets updated. I don't know how that would be implemented, but this got me thinking that maybe there is a way that this software thing could be move a little closer towards a partnership than the autocratic "hey we're going to arbitrarily change this piece of software you use frequently". (You can see similar thoughts with people complaining how Big Sur uses more space, or the complaints when GMail changed things to be less dense.)

Hypothetically, given the choice between a 10 minute, higher-environmental-impact route and an 11-minute, lower-impact one: Are you really going to take the literally selfish, worse-for-the-planet route to save one minute? Wouldn't you like to make a small "sacrifice" (the choice is only given when the ETAs are similar) that might help slow the destruction of the only environment we have?

I don't think it's fair to call it "selfish". If I am someone who only drives a few thousand miles a year or even less (this is actually true for me), then wanting to save a minute or two isn't exactly selfish compared to a person who drives 10-20k miles a year. You can't really judge on the scale of one trip.

I'm fine with the feature though as long as it gives an option. In fact, I would enjoy having the new capability to optimize for fuel economy.

IF there are 10-20k "people like you" making the "not really selfish" choice, they're doing as much harm as the person who drives 10-20k miles a year.

It's about network effects. The more people we get to make the more eco-friendly choice, the better the place gets for all of us.

Actually no, if there are 10-20k people like me only driving a few thousand miles instead of 10-20k miles per year we'd be much better off! (which btw is the average in the US)

You aren't going to shame me over a few miles when I make a concerted effort to drive 1/10 of the average American, sorry.

But hey good news, Google is abandoning remote work and making its employees drive to and from work every day probably negating any benefit from this feature whatsoever.

Depends on how much impact is actually reduced by that minute. It's going to be cool to see the comparisons in the app.

Define “close”. Is it a fixed threshold or a percentage of trip length?

I agree it's a bit vague, but realistically I would hope/think it's never more than min(2%, 5m). It obviously won't be 2m slower on a 4m ride, or 30m slower on a 5 hour ride. I don't think any reasonable person would say those are "close".

To literally answer your rhetorical question: dark patterns. Not that I think the behavior is wrong - choosing the more energy efficent of two comparable manuevers just makes sense in general. But "Changes to default behavior to change consumer outcomes." are literally dark patterns and rhetorically likened to mind control whenever they want to cast a company or industry as a villain.

"Dark patterns" is what we call it when it's done in the interest of the company, and usually against the interest of the consumer. In this case, being for the public interest, it's aligned with the much more benign "Libertarian Paternalism" approach outlined in the book Nudge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_%28book%29

Do you believe humans are causing climate change? If so, how do you envision it should be addressed that doesn't involve us changing our habits?

Quit eating factory beef.

A carbon tax.

If addressing climate change relies on people changing habits against their selfish interests, then we are doomed.

The externality should be internalised with a carbon tax. It's the simple, most obvious solution and it will cause selfish interest and ethical choices to align when it comes to carbon emission.

I prefer a "green credit" to a "carbon tax".

A tax will always be passed on to the consumer, even if the govt taxes Ford, it will just make the car more expensive.

Using game theory, a question could be "how do we get Ford to make more electric cars, improve efficiency of electric car production, and incentivize them to advertise electric cars?"

My take is that businesses drive change, not consumers. On the whole, consumers are told what they want.

When the carbon tax* was introduced in Australia our tax free threshold was increased from $6k to $18k which more than covered the increase in costs caused by the tax.

*This has since been repealed, a decision I strongly disagree with.

I believe canada proposed doing it by taking all the money collected through the carbon tax and giving it equally to all Canadian citizens. This would mean everyone gets back the amount that the average person paid, making it so the average person sees no change in their level of taxation. (It also has the effect of turning it into a highly progressive tax)

Of course it makes the ICE car more expensive (when including fuel costs). That's the whole idea.

Consumers will see that EVs are cheaper (post-tax) and will switch to EVs as a consequence.

You can make the tax revenue neutral.

When you propose a "green credit" instead of a "carbon tax", what do you mean? Is it just a different name for the same thing, or would it work differently? If it would work differently, then HOW? I'm assuming that a carbon tax would put a fixed tax per weight of C02 released charged either to the end-user or somewhere higher in the value chain (eg: a gas tax).

it's a subsidy vs a tax.

That sounds pretty bad.

I'd want to put driving-less on similar footing to buying a fancier car.

A carbon tax does that automatically with no extra bureaucracy.

(I'm all for taking the proceeds of a carbon tax and distributing them equally amongst all voters, if you want to make the whole thing revenue neutral for both the government and the 'average' consumer.)

This is not making sense. Credit is necesarily coming from some place, that is in most likely tax revenue, so it is mostly in same as a tax but with more steps and smaller direct impact. Also not correct, some tax can often be absorb by producer. You are making wrong question: goal is for to reduce carbon not producing more electric cars. This is possibly meaning different mode of transport, some things maybe remote, bicycles, trains, others. Carbon tax is enabling persons to make decision about best outcome and create the minimal of economic damage. Our needed outcome is createing tax for cost of carbon capture for every ton made of carbon in atomosphere. In ideal, this become a method for which any business can starting carbon capture, can receiving a simpel certification. Any person is then capable of finding any other person for to do his carbon capture and then producing appropriate credit form for government. This has making of capture all carbon in eventually and also creating lowest price with insentive for new developing technology.

> Our needed outcome is createing tax for cost of carbon capture for every ton made of carbon in atomosphere.

That's one outcome, but not the only one. Things like emission taxation make sense, even if there's no remediation financed with the proceeds.

See eg the sulphur dioxide emissions cap and trade program. (https://voxeu.org/article/lessons-climate-policy-us-sulphur-...) I don't think they used the proceeds to fund sulphur dioxide capture.

> This is possibly meaning different mode of transport, some things maybe remote, bicycles, trains, others.

Yes, exactly. Also: just forgoing some trips. Or driving more efficiently etc.

The whole point of a carbon tax is to be passed on to the consumer. That's a feature, not a bug.

Consumer want cars (and appliances in general) that, all else being equal, are cheaper to own and use.

With a carbon tax, Ford can decide whether they want to offer more efficient ICE or electric cars to reach that goal.

(And consumers can decide whether to use any of these options that Ford offers, or to just drive less.

Or, for some, to just suck up the cost and drive the same as before.)

I think that is a false dichotomy, GP might care and want to change habits, but considers car exhaust such a small piece of the problem that it isn't worth changing driving habits. I'm not saying that is right, simply pointing out it isn't certain GP doesn't value changing habits.

Not pinning the onus on individuals, but instead addressing the leverage points such as the corporate emissions regulations and enforcement mechanisms that exist today.

If you need the extra 5 minutes, it seems possible to turn the feature off or ignore it. It seems pretty dumb to me too, but at least it will bring some awareness to climate change, right?

>>I don't use Maps to express my environmental values

Actually, you do. Your environmental values happen to be efficiency (Km/hour) trumps efficiency (Km/gram of CO2). You wish the software to continue to express only your environmental values. It is an activist stance nonetheless.

What percentage of the limited time in your life is worth what level of impact on climate change?

Do something much more likely to be useful: implement a reasonable, even revenue-neutral carbon tax and stop with this non-sense.

This is complex and will vary significantly by person. But for anyone the answer is almost certainly non-zero. Even if only marginally. And the trend seems to be increasing.

The second part of your comment, seems to assume only one kind of action is possible. Others might say, great let's do both.

There is absolutely nothing I can do individually that will have any impact whatsoever on CO2 levels or the climate. Nothing. One person's activity is simply too small a contributor. By the same token, whether I vote or not, or who I vote for, is also irrelevant in the outcome of elections.

I cannot respond to throwawayboise directly because of thread limitations.

On its face, this argument is clearly wrong. "Absolutely nothing", is not equivalent to extremely little. Especially when, as in the case of Google Maps, there is a large multiplier.

Elections are a different beast. Assuming first-past-the-post system where impact is only at the margin (50.0001%).

Whereas direct action on CO2 production is incremental. We can argue it's not enough, but we cannot argue it is literally nothing.

> On its face, this argument is clearly wrong. "Absolutely nothing", is not equivalent to extremely little. Especially when, as in the case of Google Maps, there is a large multiplier.

It makes sense to look at these things normalised per-capita.

So for Google, making a small change has a big impact per-Googler, but it's still a small change per-capita.

Making a small per-capita change is still a small change overall.

See https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml

Though we might agree on the first premise below, there is an error in subsequent logical consequences:

"small changes alone are not enough" -> "only big changes can work" -> "small change X ought not to be undertaken"

To me parts of this looks like the fallacy of the excluded middle. To claim that X has some merit is not to claim that X on its own has sufficient merit. I apologise if you are not making such an argument, but throwawayboise and arsome certainly seem to have been. And such arguments are far from uncommon.

I do see your point about scale and multipliers but I believe efforts like these are important not only for their admittedly small yet not negligible impact, but also to help establish a foundation for the next steps that should be taken.

In the eighties, the cost-effectiveness of wind-power was way off the charts. However, you'd quantify it. Per turbine, per $, per power consumer. Turbines were just small and inefficient with few deployments. Now, many incremental improvements later, the same technology is in the right ballpark. It's a good thing those pioneers like Vestas didn't just give up when the absolute impact seemed far too small.

> "small changes alone are not enough" -> "only big changes can work" -> "small change X ought not to be undertaken"

I agree that this is wrong.

To make small changes do a lot, you have to have a lot of them.

You can still judge small changes by how much bang they provide for the buck. (Or more formally, employ the standard marginalist framework of economics.) A small impact is fine, if the cost was small, too.

Wind-power (and other renewables) are a bit complicated too judge on these historic efficiency measures, because there was so much government interference.

(I think government should perhaps tax CO2 and other emissions, but not offer any subsidies. I want eg turning the lights on less be on the same footing as switching to 'green' energy suppliers.)

(I also don't think the government subsidies for wind and photovoltaic actually helped that much in the long run. Eg as you can see, once the subsidies ran out, the photovoltaic industry mostly left Germany for China.)

To pseudo-quote quote Clay Shirky: nothing will work, everything might.

Google doesn't implement taxes, so these aren't substitutes.

The quoted paragraph clearly states that the lower-emissions route will only be given by default when there are multiple routes with a similar ETA. So it will never tell you to take a route that takes longer just to reduce your emissions, without also telling you about the shorter route with higher emissions.

Since you have seemingly already abandoned google maps due to their activism before reading this story, what were the other reasons that made you quit?

How is the fastest route not the least carbon footprint?

Efficiency drops sharply at high speed.

For long distance driving speed is key. Highways can be faster even when they are indirect. This is what the OSMAnd "Fuel Efficient Way" routing is based on. It biases towards the shortest routes that may have lower speed limits. This is nice for road trips and bicycling, but can be quirky with city driving.

OK...so google just fixed maps then. I don't know anyone who wants to get on the highway if they don't have to.

It looks like part of the carbon footprint model is based on road inclines and traffic congestion.

For example, a super-fast route that's up an extremely-steep incline on the way may technically be faster from point A to B, but would be less carbon efficient than taking a slightly-longer route that is flatter.

Driving a Chevy Volt (with an 18 kWh battery) makes you very aware of the different fuel-costs of different routes -- I very often have a choice of driving "over" or "around" small mountains (~hundreds of feet of elevation change, not ~thousands), and you can easily see the battery drop as you go up, up, up and it doesn't always recover much going down, down, down.

Going up and down mountains should be mostly a wash, apart from these small losses.

What's really eating into your battery in a way you can't recover with regenerative breaking ever is wind resistance.

Routes that make you drive faster for longer cost more energy. (And given the way wind resistance works, for the same average speed, a variable speed is more expensive than a constant one.)

Optimal regenerative braking recovers like 2/3 of the energy lost, and suboptimal braking -- for instance, if you need to decelerate more rapidly because of a bend in the road -- is worse.

Every 100 feet of elevation change amounts to ~1% of the battery capacity of a Chevy Volt; a couple of small mountains, with lots of ups and downs, and it's easy to lose 5-10% of your range versus taking a more level route, 5% if you brake well, 10% if you brake poorly.

[Which is not to say that hitting the thruway doesn't also kill your range fast.]

Downshifting is the devil.

Maybe it's the shortest total distance, but has a lot of stop lights along the way causing frequent total stops/starts

Because the fastest route doesn't have to be the shortest route. Where I live, it's often faster to drive in the opposite direction of my destination to get on a highway. It's generally slower (by a tiny amount) to take surface streets.

The reason for the enactment of the nationwide 55mph speed limit in 1974 wasn't safety, it was oil prices.

Yes, though like many other American reactions to the oil shock, this was pretty silly.

High petrol prices automatically discourage speeding. (Just as a carbon tax would.)

Of course, the US also had price controls on petrol. And the ensuing long queues and fights at the petrol station.

Their anarcho-capitalist utopian neighbour [1] to the north did not enact price controls for petrol, and subsequently did not see any queues or fights.

[1] Only half joking here: in many respects Canada is more what we'd call neoliberal today than the US. Compare also https://www.alt-m.org/2015/07/29/there-was-no-place-like-can...

Idling downhill costs less gas but may lead you in the wrong direction for a short while, vs going over a hilly route where you must accelerate uphill more often.

As a simple, unimaginative example. I'm sure you can think of others if you put in the time.

The only thing that matters for your car's carbon footprint is how much gas you use. So regardless of time, if you have more gas in the tank at the end of your trip, your carbon footprint is lower.

The faster you go, the more your fuel efficiency decreases. For the most part this is due to wind resistance, because there is a velocity^2 argument there(ie if you double your velocity, you quadruple your wind resistance). Your engine is also designed to operate more efficiently at certain speeds but that is less directly quantifiable than wind resistance.

So you might be able to get 40MPG while doing a steady 40 mph, but only get 20MPG when doing 80mph.

So if you need to go 40 miles, if you can do it at 80mph it will take you 30 minutes, and will cost you 2 gallons of fuel. If you do it at 40mph it will take you 1 hour and cost you 1 gallon of fuel. So in this contrived example the longer trip has a lower carbon footprint.

In the real world, there are rarely two parallel roads going exactly the same place but just with a different speed limit. Usually you need to drive out of your way to get onto a highway to make your trip go faster. On the other hand driving directly at a slower speed usually entails more starts/stops at traffic lights which eats into your fuel efficiency. Google is probably in a good place to answer the question of how fuel efficient is a given route because they have so much data about average speeds, accelerations/decelerations required/ etc.

Everybody is trying to explain that it's fine or that you should care or whatever, but the real counterpoint is that Google doesn't care what mapping app a few motivated cranks use.

On average people won't even notice.

Wow, I'm impressed, I've never been downvoted to -4 before. I wouldn't have expected that this would be the post to get that, though.

“I have no interest in activist software” that’s my exact sentiment.

Provide the option, sure. Plenty of people care enough to use it.

But don’t force it on me. I’ll find software that actually wants to serve its purpose.

If you read the article, there's an option in the settings to not have this option "forced" on you. Even when it's "forced", it's only defaulting to more carbon-positive routes when the ETAs are comparable, so it shouldn't have much of an effect on whether you care about the feature or not.

What if they released the exact same product as "minimize fuel cost if it doesn't take more time" and set that to default? You can still change to "fastest" if that's your preference.

My personal annoyance: their walking directions assume you don't know parkour and there isn't even an option for that

I genuinely cannot tell if that last bit is sarcasm or not!

It's a near-truth, told to own my selfish tendencies while I'm on the topic of somebody else's. The truth being that I don't want that info from google, rather I delight in beating its time. I do wish that I could dial in a walking speed, though, and so do people with reduced mobility.

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