#drivingdirections — Public Fediverse posts

Weekly output: Google’s live lane guidance, Candela’s battery-electric hydrofoils

LISBON–I traveled here to speak at my ninth Web Summit conference in Europe via another EU city that I’m quite fond of, Barcelona. The Mozilla Foundation had the good taste to host its Mozilla Festival there and then provide me with a travel stipend to cover the event, so of course I was willing to start my Web Summit trip a few days early. Even though that left me little time at home between working a 15-hour day Tuesday as an election officer and then heading to Dulles Airport Wednesday afternoon.

11/4/2025: Safe to Go? Google Maps Adds ‘Live Lane Guidance’ for Polestar 4 EVs, PCMag

PCMag had two stories under my byline this week, and this was the one I actually wrote this week to cover an update to the built-in Google navigation in one of Polestar’s battery-electric vehicles. The other involved my editor updating a post I wrote in May about President Trump withdrawing his nomination of private astronaut and payments billionaire Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator, the new plot twist being that Trump had changed his mind again and had re-nominated Isaacman. I realize how confusing that last sentence can look. 

11/7/2025: This battery-electric hydrofoil could supercharge a ferry transformation, Fast Company

Two years after getting an introduction to the Swedish startup Candela’s battery-electric hydrofoil sport boats on the San Francisco Bay, I enjoyed an update of the experience on waters I know much better–the Potomac and the Anacostia. With a longer word count than I had for that PCMag report in the summer of 2023, I went into much more detail about Candela’s ambitions to get into the passenger-ferry business, its likely competition in that market, and potential obstacles to electrifying ferries.

#Anacostia #batteryElectricVehicle #Candela #cleanTransportation #drivingDirections #electricBoat #EVs #ferry #GoogleMaps #greenTransportation #navigation #Polestar #Potomac

Driver misdirections: Why can’t Apple and Google read this sign in Arlington?

Machine vision has advanced immensely over the last decade, but Apple and Google’s map apps remain functionally illiterate when it comes to a big green sign at the top of an onramp to U.S. 50 eastbound from North Courthouse Road in Arlington.

That sign’s message is reasonably simple compared to some of the signage that I’ve seen:

NO ACCESS TO

     N Rolfe St
     N Rhodes St
     N Queen St

Those are the next three streets available at the next offramp east on 50, aka Arlington Boulevard, which starts just under 1,000 feet from the top of that offramp. The sign, apparently present since the reconstruction of this interchange in a less crash-inducing layout wrapped in 2014, is there to remind drivers that they have too little room to scoot from that left-lane onramp across three lanes of traffic to the right-lane exit.

Apple Maps and Google Maps, however, disagree despite presenting clear photos of this sign in their Look Around and Street View perspectives. Punch in driving directions from someplace west of that on-ramp to a location near that off-ramp, and these navigation apps will suggest this unwise routing as their first or second option.

I belated realized this error not because I was spot-checking directions in those apps, but because like a dope I followed Google’s advice—even though I should also know how to read big green signs by roads.

Realizing my mistake and Google’s led me to try to report the errant advice. But Google now makes that its own wayfinding adventure because you can’t report a problem in the Google Maps app for Android or iOS—you know, where you’d encounter incorrect directions in everyday use.

Instead, you have to recreate the directions in the desktop-Web version of Google Maps, click the “Details” link below the route and then click on the smallest text visible—the “Send Product Feedback” link at the bottom right corner—to see “Report a problem.”

To its credit, Apple Maps does let you flag incorrect routing in its iPhone app: Scroll down to the end of the faulty directions, tap “Report an Issue,” tap the step with the wrong turn, select the category of mistake, write your description and upload a photo if that can help make your case.

I’ve now done that in both Apple and Google Maps. But if this error really has lingered this many years, I’m not going to bank on getting a thank-you acknowledgment from either company next week. Or maybe ever.

#AppleMaps #Arlington #ArlingtonBoulevard #CourthouseRoad #drivingDirections #GoogleMaps #navigation #reportErrorAppleMaps #reportErrorGoogleMaps #signage #US50