tomtom eco route

Joined
Dec 3, 2007
Messages
747
Location
Holtsville, NY
TomTom Model(s)
2535M Live
Has anyone had any experience with this function. I noticed that my 2535 m live has this choice. Does it limit your speed compared to fastest. The few routes I put in to see the difference between the fastest and eco seemed the same. What are tomtom thoughts on this setting. I think that IQ routing is allowed here also.
 
The GO740 has ecoroutes too. I haven't found any difference between ecouroute and fastest either. Maybe there isn't enough data in us maps yet.
 
The GO740 has ecoroutes too. I haven't found any difference between ecouroute and fastest either. Maybe there isn't enough data in us maps yet.
I've always questioned how this feature would operate since the vehicle itself can make such a difference. One of my vehicles has a very low CD, and one of my vehicles is like driving a brick in the wind. The former tolerates higher speeds without nearly as much of a penalty in mileage compared to the latter. As a result, the recommendation of "eco" routing should, by rights, be different based upon which of the vehicles I'm driving. One vehicle may tolerate highway speeds better than another, changing the decision about whether or not to use or avoid higher speed roads vs secondary roads (as determined by average speed data embedded in maps). The TomTom unit knows nothing of vehicle characteristics.

Another thing that TomTom doesn't know... what's actually causing the average speed info for road segments that is embedded in the maps (IQRoutes data). Stop/start cycle driving can REALLY put a serious dent in mileage for most vehicles. While TomTom's maps may know the average speed for a piece of road at a given time of day, they do NOT know what's causing those speeds to be what they are. Is it a slower speed limit, normally slower traffic flow, or a long series of mileage killing traffic lights? Even the hypermilers who do their best to plan ahead for lights can't beat them when they're not synchronized (and often not even if they are). So if routing includes city driving, I can't imagine how TomTom has enough information to make an intelligent decision about that.

Last, there's the issue of traffic. Unless a unit has Live traffic (or even the lesser RDS traffic) available to it, it hasn't a clue about mileage and routing. I've taken trips that while some miles longer, avoided long stretches of stop and go traffic or idling in traffic for lengthy periods of time. In fact, I'd say that my best "eco route" feature on my 740 is the Live (now HD) traffic. This kind of decision making ability turns out to be the most important factor in "eco" routing on some trips, especially for commuters with longish drives. How could such a feature not require the availability of traffic data?

I guess I haven't a clue as to how this feature actually works, but it certainly seems that it would need certain input that it doesn't request or may not have available. I'm wondering if it's really useful or just a marketing gimmick?
 
The GO740 has ecoroutes too. I haven't found any difference between ecouroute and fastest either. Maybe there isn't enough data in us maps yet.

I've never seen any difference between ecouroute and fastest in the UK either.
 
I do find routing differences with Garmin's EcoRoute, unlike what I saw with TT. Those routes tend to avoid traffic lights, sharp turns, frequent speed limit changes, hills, etc if a slightly longer but more fuel efficient road is available. On most routes I haven't seen big differences tho. One thing I do like is it's reporting of the fuel used per trip. It's made me much more aware of the associated costs. Coupled with Garmin's EcoRoute HD cable it's pretty dead on. With TomTom now deciding to offer their own "EcoRoute" cable, at least their commercial customers may get more from the feature.
 
Reviving this old thread. I'm in the US and currently looking into 1435TM.

I used to have trouble w/ the older XL430TM model where the IQ route would try to save a bit of distance by going into small residential streets, or avoiding highway routes and go local streets.


I wonder if this 'Eco Route' feature would help change that a bit --


meaning if it would try to stay more on the highway (to save gas) instead of going local streets to save a bit of small travel distance.


Anyone has any good news regarding this? Or no difference in choosing more highway routes?
 
I've never used that selection on a 1535 unit here and, as I remember, the few posts I've been about eco routing all seem to be similar in that the user really didn't notice much difference in a route or selecting the fastest.
 
"Fastest" would very often be the most fuel efficient in any case. For most vehicles, urban interstate speeds don't produce much of a penalty for drag coefficient, but stop/start driving on surface streets can be lethal to gas mileage.
 

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