It’s also rolling out Live View in select places and wheelchair accessible filters around the world
Google Maps is an invaluable tool for getting around, whether you’re on foot, using public transit, or going by car. If you opt for the latter option, you’ll have to stop and refuel or recharge your vehicle every once in a while, though. While this isn’t a big deal for petrol-powered cars, EV charging still suffers from different speed options. To help cut short your charging stop, Google Maps now lets you quickly filter out slow chargers. Maps is also launching its new Search with Live View for pedestrians in limited places and expands its wheelchair accessible layer internationally.
Google announced that the new EV charging filtering options will show up when you search for “EV charging stations.” Rather than having to dig down into the “more filters” section, you can simply hit the new “fast charge” filter below the search bar to find the fastest options—faster than 50kW, to be specific. It’s also possible to filter for stations compatible with your charging plug only. Both of these options are available on Android and iOS everywhere in the world where there are EV charging stations.
Meanwhile, Search with Live View is launching after it was first announced in September. As the name suggests, the new feature lives inside Live View, which allows you to navigate more easily by overlaying your route in an AR live view of the world around you using your phone’s camera. Search with Live View offers a shortcut to this mode in the search bar, and it allows you to search for key nearby places within Live View. You can find nearby apparel, ATMs, cafés, restaurants, and more, and then easily navigate to these on foot. The feature will come to London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo in the coming weeks on both Android and iOS.
After years of collecting data on wheelchair accessible venues, Google is also rolling out its accessible places layer worldwide today. It can be turned on in Google Maps’ settings. Once that’s done, businesses will either be displayed as wheelchair accessible or as inaccessible. Google also continues encouraging users to mark businesses as wheelchair friendly as they come across them, which is the data the company uses to display this layer of information.
With these new changes in mind, Google Maps just keeps getting better. If you don’t spot them in your app just yet, make sure you’re on the latest version. Otherwise, you might just need to be patient, as Google is rolling them out in stages.
