For years, electric vehicle owners using Android Auto have lived with an oddly frustrating gap: Google Maps on their phone could plan a route with charging stops, but the moment they projected it onto their car’s infotainment screen, that intelligence vanished. The charging stations disappeared. The state-of-charge estimates evaporated. Drivers were left toggling between their phone and their dashboard, a workaround that felt absurd given Google’s engineering resources.
That’s finally changing.
Google has begun rolling out EV trip planning directly within Google Maps on Android Auto, according to a report from Android Authority. The feature, spotted in version 25.21 of the Google Maps app, allows drivers to see recommended charging stops along their route, complete with estimated arrival charge levels and suggested charging durations — all rendered on the car’s built-in display rather than requiring a glance down at a phone.
It sounds incremental. It isn’t.
The absence of this feature on Android Auto has been one of the more conspicuous holes in Google’s EV strategy, particularly as the company has spent years building out EV-specific capabilities in Google Maps on phones and in vehicles running its built-in Google platform (found in cars from Volvo, Polestar, GM, Ford, and others). Those built-in systems have offered charge-aware routing since 2022, factoring in battery level, elevation changes, weather, and driving speed to recommend when and where to stop. Android Auto users — a far larger group, since the platform works with virtually any modern car — got none of that.
The disparity was hard to justify. Android Auto is Google’s most widely deployed in-car platform, compatible with hundreds of vehicle models across dozens of brands. Yet EV owners using it were treated as an afterthought, forced to plan trips on their phone and then manually follow along, or rely on their car’s native navigation system, which often has inferior search and routing compared to Google Maps.
What the new feature delivers is straightforward but meaningful. When an EV owner sets a destination that exceeds their current battery range, Google Maps on Android Auto will now suggest charging stops along the way. The interface shows the expected battery percentage upon arrival at each charger, the recommended charging time, and the projected charge level when departing. It integrates with the same real-time charger availability data that Google Maps already surfaces on mobile, including information about charger types, speeds, and whether plugs are currently in use.
There are limitations. The feature requires that the vehicle share its battery state-of-charge with Android Auto, which not all EVs do consistently. And the initial rollout appears to be server-side, meaning it’s appearing for some users before others regardless of app version — a classic Google staged deployment. Android Authority noted that the feature was confirmed working for at least one user running version 25.21 of Google Maps, though others on the same version had not yet received it.
The timing is notable. Google has been steadily expanding its EV features across platforms throughout 2025. Earlier this year, the company added the ability to filter charging stations by plug type and charging speed directly in Google Maps search results. It also improved its charger availability predictions using AI, estimating how likely a given station is to have an open plug when a driver arrives — a feature that addresses one of the most persistent anxieties of EV ownership.
Apple, for its part, has offered EV routing in Apple Maps with CarPlay since iOS 14 in 2020, though the implementation has been uneven and depends heavily on automaker cooperation to access battery data. Tesla, of course, has its own proprietary trip planner built into every vehicle, widely regarded as the best in the industry for its accuracy and its tight integration with the Supercharger network. Google’s challenge has always been different: building a system that works across every EV brand, every charging network, and every vehicle configuration. That’s harder. And it’s taken longer.
But the competitive pressure is real. The EV market in the United States has grown to roughly 10% of new car sales, according to data from Cox Automotive. Charging infrastructure remains the single biggest friction point for adoption, and the software that helps drivers find, evaluate, and route to chargers has become a genuine differentiator. Apps like A Better Route Planner (ABRP) have built loyal followings precisely because the default navigation options from Google and Apple were insufficient for long-distance EV travel. ABRP offers granular control over charging preferences, real-time crowd-sourced charger status, and highly accurate consumption modeling that accounts for cargo weight, tire pressure, and HVAC usage.
Google’s advantage is distribution. Hundreds of millions of people already use Google Maps. They don’t want to download a separate app for trip planning. They don’t want to cross-reference two screens. They want to type in a destination and go, with the software handling the complexity of when and where to charge. That’s what this Android Auto update begins to deliver.
The integration also matters for a less obvious reason: safety. Drivers fiddling with their phones while their car’s screen shows a different route is a distraction problem. Unifying the experience on the car’s display — where it can be seen at a glance and controlled with voice commands or steering wheel buttons — is a genuine improvement in how EV drivers interact with their vehicles on long trips.
There’s a broader strategic dimension here, too. Google has been positioning its automotive software as a platform play, offering automakers a choice between Android Auto (which mirrors a phone app) and Android Automotive OS (which runs natively on the car’s hardware). The latter gives Google deeper integration — access to vehicle sensors, battery data, HVAC controls — and has been the platform where EV features appeared first. By bringing feature parity to Android Auto, Google reduces one of the key arguments automakers had for adopting the more invasive built-in system. Or perhaps it’s a signal that Google is confident enough in Android Automotive OS adoption that it can afford to share these features more broadly.
Either way, EV owners using Android Auto are getting something they should have had years ago. The rollout is gradual, the feature set will likely expand, and the accuracy of charge estimates will improve as more vehicles share richer data with the platform. For now, though, the simple act of seeing your charging stops on your car’s screen — without picking up your phone — represents a tangible quality-of-life improvement for a growing segment of drivers who’ve been underserved by one of the world’s most powerful software companies.
And it’s about time.
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