Google Maps has begun displaying fuel prices across the UK, a delivery milestone for the government’s Fuel Finder scheme that arrives as petrol and diesel costs continue to climb. From Thursday, motorists searching for forecourts on the app will see locations alongside pricing, with the data supplied through the scheme.
The rollout places one of Britain’s most widely used navigation tools at the centre of an ongoing effort to make fuel pricing information genuinely usable. According to Ofcom, Google Maps is used by 77% of Britain’s adult population for general navigation, giving the feature a reach that dedicated price-comparison apps have never matched. The feature is already part of Waze, which is used by around 2 million people in the UK, while Apple Maps does not show fuel prices, although some third-party apps can link to its maps on iPhones.
The timing matters. Days before the launch, the price of diesel topped £2 per litre for the first time, a level RAC policy head Simon Williams described as “a price threshold no one wanted to cross”. Diesel has since fallen by 2p, but the AA says an average 55 litre tank of diesel still costs around £110, with the petrol equivalent coming to around £96. Fuel costs around the world have been dramatically impacted by the US war with Iran and Russia’s war with Ukraine.
The scheme itself carries a legal obligation designed to keep the data current: UK forecourts must add their prices to Fuel Finder within 30 minutes of changing them. Fuel Finder was launched in February by former chancellor Rachel Reeves, who said at the time it could save households £40 per year.
Whether the delivery machinery behind the scheme is working as intended, however, remains a live question. Some experts say Fuel Finder is not entirely reliable. Clare Lafferty, director at the price comparison site PetrolPrices, said her firm still has to supplement the government feed with other data sources. “At the moment, we still have to supplement the Government’s Fuel Finder feed with other data sources because, on its own, it does not provide the level of coverage and accuracy needed to deliver a complete and reliable service to motorists,” she said.
She pointed to gaps in compliance on the ground. “There are still sites that have not registered with the scheme at all, alongside sites that have registered but are not consistently updating their prices within the required timeframe.” The firm identified 200 forecourts in September which it did not believe had updated their diesel prices in time.
Google, for its part, says it has built its own checks into the pipeline. Sarah-Jayne Williams, director of product partnerships for Google Maps and Waze, said the firm would verify the data independently and would not display prices it believed were not up to date. “Accuracy is very important, so we will still show the petrol station and where it is, but you’ll only see a price if we have high confidence that it’s the right price,” she said. In practice, that means a motorist may see a forecourt on the map without a price attached if the feed behind it cannot be trusted.
On the supply side of the scheme, the trade body representing the forecourts themselves reports compliance. The Petrol Retailers Association, which represents thousands of UK forecourts and petrol retailers, said its members were complying with the rules.
The picture that emerges is one of a service moving from plan to platform: a government scheme launched with a savings promise, now embedded in the country’s dominant navigation app, but still dependent on hundreds of individual operators updating prices within a tight 30-minute window. For the motorists the scheme is meant to serve, the measure of success will be whether the prices they see on screen match the ones on the pump.