Google owns Waze so Google maps should be able to have the info.
The HOV lane thing is a setting in Waze, It doesn't have accurate enough info which lane you are in. Just just tells you to use it and then assumes you do.
Google bought Waze. Waze was superior to begin with in most respects, except for the best feature Google has, telling you about alternative routes right on the map like gray lines with a "3 minutes slower" and "17 minutes faster" and stuff, or the ability of Google to tell you which lane to get in. It will take a LONG time for Google to catch up to Waze. Better yet would be for Waze to integrate the very few things Google does better like the alternate routes and lane options. But my point is that they are two different programs by two different teams. The corporate team just has lower overall quality, and can't shoehorn a good program (Waze) written by good minded souls into small minds. Just because the same company owns both of them doesn't mean anybody has decided to integrate the best of both into one thing and do it successfully. There's a lot of Not Invented Here hurdles to overcome, especially if the people crying NIV are the inferior ones, and won't let go of their inferior work.
I don't have Tesla so I want to know:
One thing that miffs me about just about every single navigator out there: lack of 3D physical space. I mean, there are plenty of places where there are tunnels, bridges, and other height-specific roadways that absolutely make a huge difference as to where you are, especially when there's a different roadway up or down from you. I'm literally surrounded by many such events every time I drive somewhere, and I see most of the navigators suck big time in dealing with this. They need to pay attention to the height. Yes, I know the Earth sloshes about a lot and changes heights constantly, but all it takes is a bit of math to figure out the relative positions of the road you're on to the roads in the database, and presto, it knows which road you're on by tracing lines of you and every other vehicle that's on nearby road. It would get an average current height of the road from all this data, and if you are on or under a bridge, tunnel, or other height oriented road feature, it would exactly know which roadway you are on. This would be relatively easy to program, although if I were a feature-slashing corporation who wants to save money run by knuckleheads and hiring knuckle headed programmers, I might not pay for the proper work in this regard. How does the Tesla navigation stack up? A lot of my navigation programs throw fits every time I cross or go under some bridge or tunnel, or heavens to Betsy, park under a freeway.
Luckily it's rarely given me much problem, because I've been lucky and known my way around when it's happened, but there are a few times I actually drove an extra 15 minutes because I thought it knew what it was telling me.
I use Waze (app), TomTom (iPhone app -- uses GPS, with enhancements by Internet update and Internet traffic), Google Maps (app), my car's builtin GPS-only navigation (2007 data), and the builtin iPhone app. For long drives, I usually get Waze, TomTom, Google. For tight cities, I go for those three + my car's nav. These are the good points of each:
Google: quickest to dial down to destination and get going. Immediately copy to Waze.
Waze: Second one to turn on, since it's a copy and paste string. Immediately get ready for TomTom.
TomTom: it has a clunky interface which I hate, and its colors are hard to understand. But it is as good as Waze in terms of overall quality. I use it for inner city or anyplace where I don't know the speed limit, because it shows the speed limit so I don't get tickets, and I use it in areas without Internet coverage, since it has its maps builtin and never stops working. TomTom tells me which lanes to use, also, which is also very useful in unfamiliar areas with lots of turns. TomTom has a lot of refinement but no polish, or a lot of polish and no refinement, however you look at it: it is a really old old old style of programming that doesn't really integrate its UI very well, and like I said, is very clunky. But it has grown up making this better and better and better, and now is so darn good I like that they haven't abandoned good work for the sake of trying to be fresh and ending up with crap. I forget, but I think TomTom is around $30-$60, and well worth it. (Anybody who can't afford that can eek by with some crappy GPS-only free navigation programs out there -- I whole heartedly recommend this because the no-Internet areas will eat you alive).
Back to Google: it tells me which lanes to use, and in very long distance driving with a lot of heavy traffic, it can tell me some decent alternate routes last-minute with gray lines and text floating on the map, but I have to look to see it.
Car navigation: I fire it up when I just want that extra set of eyes on the navigation. When I'm really unsure of my direction, having all 4 navigators fired up at the same time really helps. The stupid GPS-only navigation without traffic gives me no-stoplight no-traffic fastest routes, which is a good reference point for what all the other navigators are trying to tell me. The voice and user interface is well integrated to the car and well thought out, so it is really awesome when two or more navigators agree and it all helps me out.
Finally, Waze: when everything else settles down, Waze is my main nav app. It often has a more intelligent route than even Google, and just the other day it helped save me 15 minutes over what Google and every other app told me. It tells me of police traps and road hazards, and mostly I like informing other users of road hazards and police traps, and also marking "not there" for cars that are not road hazards (cars that are just parked 15 feet away from the road) that busybodies like to mark as road hazards.
I switch between Waze, Google Maps (for faster route ideas and lane choices), and TomTom, all of which are very good at handling everything, but no one is perfect. I tend to spend about 40% TomTom (I drive in a LOT of no-Internet areas), 50% Waze, and 10% Google (switch in, switch out). I also concurrently use my car's nav about 10% of the time, more like 40% for new or long trips.
My hope is that they all integrate all the above features and carpool lanes with the 1, 2, 3 switchable transponders and my willingness level to pay $20 for an express lane trip to get someplace 20 minutes faster (with less chance of a horrible accident).
But my main question is about 3D: does Tesla's navigator know you're on a bridge or under it? Or in a tunnel or over it?
