But I do recall seeing some sort of green, fuel save mode which I assumed would prefer straights to hills etc.
Part of that could be driving style.
Getting to one nearby city really has two main routes for me—the single lane highway, or the backroads with a bunch of weird turns and stuff.
You hop on the highway and besides a couple of towns you pass through you more or less just space out for an hour and then you’re there. Your speed on the highway is pretty much fixed. There’s heavy enough traffic that even if you were to try and pass and drive aggressively you’re never really beating the map estimate. Often you come in a bit longer because it only takes one person doing 15-20 under the speed limit to just create a rolling roadblock.
The back roads, however, are basically empty. How fast you get there is pretty much up to you.
The highway is faster and less stressful for my wife. The back roads are faster and less stressful for me. I’m not even speeding much or driving aggressively. I’m just comfortable actually doing the speed limit through those areas and passing where necessary.
I can understand the jam thing but the weird route thing is crazy, especially because that route often makes you spend more time not less. It prefers weird backroads with lots of turns instead of straight larger roads (and that's stupid) but a thing I noticed traveling a lot for work in a hilly area is that it doesn't seem to take road pendency into account. Sometimes it makes you go up and down a hill instead of staying in the valley road that goes around it: it take twice the time IRL but is like it thinks "whoa, 5km instead of 7, that's a great optimization" and that's incredibly stupid.
Apple maps is more conservative and tries to stick to larger roads if possible only sending you into more obscure ones if it is very convenient.
Another thing is that Google Maps is really aggressive on labeling something as a road: sometimes they are off roads, tractor paths or large trails that a car cannot travel on but it doesn't care.
Those are my impressions traveling mostly in Italy and bordering countries.