Elon Musk recently confirmed on a livestream that Tesla will add a feature to avoid highways in its navigation options.
Avoid Highways has been an often-requested feature from Tesla owners, as most other navigation services, including Google and Apple Maps, and 3rd party GPS devices, include such an option.
Avoid Highways
The avoid highways feature will be useful for many drivers, who prefer to take inner-city or country roads to their destinations. This option will most likely sit right next to the current “Avoid Tolls” option that’s already available in the navigation settings.
Tesla leverages various Google APIs for their navigation system, including map tiles, satellite imagery, traffic and points of interest. However, routing is developed in-house so that Tesla can choose energy efficient routes, as well as account for charging stops.
Tesla’s navigation system typically chooses highway routes due to being the fastest route, however, Tesla does show up to two alternate routes when a new destination is entered.
Owners have previously used workarounds like adding secondary stops off-highway or planning their route through a third-party interface like Google Maps to ensure they’re not on highways.
Avoiding highways can also help drivers find scenic, new, or unique routes that would otherwise be missing. This is an excellent option for semi-rural areas as well, where highways often run side-by-side or in the same general direction as country roads, minus the scenic features. Additionally, many young or old drivers are often uncomfortable with merging on and off highways for short trips.
Release Date
This feature is probably a little while away given that Elon Musk only confirmed it recently and Tesla needs to develop it themselves instead of just turning using it in Google’s API.
In the meantime, you can add stops along your route to force a path you’d like to take or use Google or Apple Maps on your phone.
