Could this AI powered platform transform how you plan a road trip?

"We’ll take the long way home." Hands up who’s ever had that thought, and then, at the prospect of actually planning the damn thing, immediately given up and thumbed it straight into the satnav?

And sure, while most nav systems allow you to set them to avoid motorways, anyone who’s ever done that will know that the route it takes you on can be… sketchy. Now, though, a new chat-based AI road trip planner is claiming to change all that.

Called New Roads, we’re told it creates personalised driving routes based on the car you drive, the routes you prefer and how long you’ve got, as well as suggesting hotels, lunch stops, even ferry and train crossings, along the way. Sounds promising.

How does it work? Seemingly much like that ChatGPT app you’ve probably already got on your phone. By having a ‘conversation’ with it, it reportedly learns your requirements and then builds a completely bespoke itinerary that you can customise to your liking. 

It also includes links for booking any hotels, lunch stops or transport requirements – much like your own personal travel agent from the sounds of things. Once the route is planned, you can then export it to Google Maps ready to load into CarPlay or Android Auto.

Makes sense, right? Because where the Hardknott Pass in the Lake District – one of the gnarliest and steepest roads in the UK – favours a small hot hatch, you might well want to take an alternative route in your supercar. This being TopGear, we speak from er... experience. Shudders.

We’re told the platform is also constantly learning, based on community feedback, to offer better routes and stops for future users.

All well and good being told it can do these things… but time to give it a go, based on a trip we actually took from London to Switzerland in a 996-gen Porsche 911 C4S last year, something we had indeed spent hours planning. Would New Roads produce similar results?

Firstly, we explained what we wanted: to drive from London to Switzerland and back in around one week with no more than four hours of driving per day, visiting some interesting cities along the way, and including some famous mountain passes in Switzerland.

Then followed some back and forth. What car were we driving? What vibes did we want? What hotel style were we after? After suggesting we visit passes including Susten, Grimsel, and Furka, as well as to stop off at places of interest including Andermatt, Lucerne and Interlaken – all of which we did on our trip – an eight-day itinerary was produced.

Not bad for five minutes' work. It wasn’t, however, perfect – it had some trouble creating the route on the Swiss passes, attempting to divert us around them, presumably because these passes are currently closed (despite telling it we wanted to go in June). 

The itinerary also meant driving from Interlaken to London in one stint, which is far longer than the four-hour limit we asked for.

Conclusion? New Roads looks like a great starting point from which to build a road trip, though we wouldn’t blindly trust the results, as is the case for anything AI generated. Currently the platform covers the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium, with plans to expand to the rest of the world. Guess you’ve really no excuse not to take the long way home now…