Your phone has had this for years. Your car’s infotainment screen hasn’t, until now. A Google Maps speedometer is starting to show up on Android Auto, according to reports spotted on Reddit and corroborated by 9to5Google.
The Google Maps speedometer shows your current speed as a floating icon next to the posted speed limit. Go over that limit, and the icon turns yellow, then red. It works the same way it already does on phones and CarPlay. If you haven’t set a route, it just tracks your current speed with no limit shown. Right now, the rollout looks tied to a specific Google Maps beta version and a server-side switch, so most Android Auto users won’t see it yet. Reports of the speedometer appearing so far include users in Canada and India.
Google hasn’t put out any official word on this one. No blog post, no changelog entry, nothing. Google Maps quietly rolled out EV trip-planning features to Android Auto the same way earlier this year. That tracks with how Google usually handles these smaller, gradual feature flips.
Why This Took So Long
Google Maps added its speedometer to Android phones back in 2019. Waze had one even before that. CarPlay got its version in 2024, closing the gap for iPhone users everywhere except inside a car running Android Auto. That left Android Auto as the one platform where you could be driving with Google Maps open and still have no idea how fast you were going unless you glanced at your actual dashboard.
It’s a strange gap for a feature this simple. Android Auto is already in the middle of a bigger round of updates this year, and the platform already tracks your location and speed constantly to handle navigation and rerouting. Showing a Google Maps speedometer on top of that data shouldn’t have needed years of extra work.
If you’re on Android Auto and haven’t seen it yet, don’t worry. You’re probably just waiting on the same server-side switch everyone else is.
