Google Maps carbon emissions leaderboard

Happy Tuesday everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend.

This weekend I did a fair amount of driving between going up to LA for a show and driving to visit my in-laws. All in all, it was a fun weekend but it was a lot of time in the car. As far as cars go I’m pretty simple. I drive a Honda Accord and will probably get another one once I drive this one into the ground.

Living in California there’s an increasing trend towards EVs and I’ll probably make the leap at some point, but I don’t want to have to deal with keeping my car charged when I can barely charge my phone as it is.

This all got me thinking… Google has started to add a few small features here and there that push users to think about saving money on gas and having a positive environmental impact. It’s a nice effort, but at the same time car, gas, and other businesses benefit from people driving more.

What if Google leaned into this with a “carbon emissions leaderboard?” You could see your carbon emitted per drive and on a local or global level. Google could even “help” you increase the amount of carbon you emit to increase your score.

I had also toyed around with some sort of "reward” structure for this (for example, drive a certain number of miles, get a discount on a gas-guzzling car"). Ultimately, this wouldn’t happen because while it aligns with the corporate objectives of some companies, it’s not positioned in a way that emotionally aligns with most consumer expectations. A carbon reduction score on the other hand might have some actual utility.

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