Google Maps · Product sense · Mid · 60 to 90 minutes

Google Maps EV Road Trip Planning

Google Maps is a navigation and local discovery service that helps people find places, plan routes, and travel from one point to another. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

User segmentation
Journey mapping
Prioritisation
Metric design
Risk management

The situation

The Director of Consumer Navigation has asked your team for a proposal on how Google Maps should improve the long road trip experience for electric vehicle drivers who plan and navigate mainly from their phone. EV adoption is growing, and summer travel is approaching, but user research and support feedback show that drivers still feel high stress on unfamiliar long trips when charging stops are added automatically but station data is incomplete, a charger is busy or broken, or they need a reliable backup without rebuilding the whole route. Google Maps already offers EV aware routing with charging stops on long routes, charging time and arrival battery estimates, strongest on cars with Google built in, and live availability for some stations. The gap is not basic charging aware routing. The gap is dependable phone based multi stop planning, backup plans, and trust in charger data. Assume the following illustrative numbers: EV trip planners are growing 35 percent year over year, 28 percent of long EV trips involve at least one manual charger edit, and 18 percent of surveyed users say they nearly ran too low because a planned stop was not usable. The hard part is improving confidence without promising precision the data cannot always support.

What to produce

A 1 to 2 page product proposal

Your answer must

Define the primary user segments for EV road trips, choose one target segment for v1, and explain why other segments are not first.
Describe the current long trip journey in Google Maps for that segment and identify the 2 to 3 biggest failure points, tied specifically to backup planning, trust in charger data, or phone based multi stop planning.
Propose a product direction for improving the experience, including the core user flow and the specific features in v1, and state clearly how it builds on existing Google Maps EV aware routing instead of replacing it.
Prioritise the work into v1, later, and not doing, with explicit trade offs across user value, engineering effort, and data reliability.
Define 3 to 5 success metrics, at least 1 guardrail metric, and a rollout or experiment plan for the first 6 months.

Constraints

Plan within a 6 month horizon using an existing consumer Maps team, no major reorg and no net new platform.
The solution must work in the Google Maps phone app on both Android and iOS, and cannot depend on car OEM integrations or Google built in surfaces.
Do not assume new exclusive charger partnerships or perfect real time station data. Use existing data sources and realistic improvements to ranking, presentation, and planning flows.
You may propose light UX changes and backend logic changes, but not a full rewrite of turn by turn navigation.

Format

Structure your answer as problem, target user, proposed solution, prioritisation, and metrics. Be explicit about trade offs and about what Google Maps already does today.