Does google maps use elevation to calculate travel distance?
I doubt it. Since the length of a sloped road would be sqrt(1+x^2)
-times the length of the flat one (where x
is the slope). For low values of x
, this is roughly 1+1/2*x^2
, which is rather low, eg. for a 10 % slope, you get an error of 0.5 %. Not considering the actual lane you drive probably has a similar error.
Even a very steep 10% grade is only 1/2% longer than a flat road covering the same horizontal distance.