latency
/ˈleɪt(ə)nsi/ noun- The delay between a request and its answer.
- The time in which a driver decides not to wait.
14 May 2026 · Amsterdam · 1 minute
The four seconds in which drivers decide to look away
A route that takes four seconds to plan is not four times worse than one that takes one second. It is a different product. At one second the driver watches it happen; at four they look away, and some of them do not look back.1
Where the time goes
A request to plan a route with charging stops does a surprising amount of work: it reads the car’s state, the map, the chargers on the way and their likely availability, then searches through thousands of possible stops.
// The budget for one route, in milliseconds. The search gets what is left.
const budget = { network: 120, car: 40, chargers: 180, search: 450, answer: 60 };
const total = Object.values(budget).reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0); // 850The search is the only part that can be made smarter. Everything else can only be made closer: cached, prefetched, or asked for before the driver has finished typing.2
The rule
Answer something within a tenth of a second, even if it is only the start of the answer. A line on the map that appears and then improves feels faster than a perfect line that arrives late.