Android - How can I get Google Maps on Android to show metric units?

I'm in Canada and recently made a road trip to the states. When I'm planning a trip starting in Canada, the whole trip is in km, even if it crosses into the US. If the trip starts in the US, however, it shows everything in miles, even if it crosses into Canada. It appears that it's not the location set in your phone but rather the location of the phone itself (if using "my location" as the departure point - otherwise it's just the departure point).

You can try this out by plotting a trip from a "miles" country to a "km" country and then clicking the reverse trip. The units changed with me.

Unfortunately, I saw no way to post a comment to your question though this is not really an answer:

I am spanish and therefore my Samsung Galaxy Tab is configured for my country. When using the measure ruler from the labs tab of Google maps I get all the distances in metres/kilometres instead of miles.

So it seems that changing the locale might help

It's 2015. In Android I can choose distance units for Maps. It defaults to automatic. For some reason, automatic gives my results in miles (I live in Australia). Navigation is metric. But anyway, if I choose Kilometres instead of automatic, I get kilometres.