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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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It doesn't matter, Tesla cars are marketed to the public which isn't expected to know these things. To probably 90% of people "autopilot" means "drive automatically".
Based on what?
Based on my usage and understanding of the word being a lay person.
I'm an engineer myself, sometimes there are words that you have to be cognizant of the differences in meaning to other engineers vs lay people or even engineers in other fields. Some words are heavily overloaded, and "autopilot" is kinda one of them (others being "domain", "node", "artificial intelligence", etc.).
Tesla markets this feature as "Full Self-Driving Capability." Maybe I'm poorly informed, but to me that means that the car is fully capable of driving itself without human interaction.
FSD is an entirely separate thing. Autopilot is just an LKAS system, or adaptive cruise control.
Aha, today I learned that Autopilot is just lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control. I feel that it must be a common misunderstanding to confuse the terms "Autopilot" and "Fully Self-Driving" in the vernacular.
Many other manufacturers refer to lane-keeping systems as "driver assistance," and I believe Tesla is intentionally misleading consumers with the impression that their system is more capable and allows the driver to pay less attention.
Until you drive it. You know the capabilities, you know when you can and cannot activate it, you know how often it tells you to look at the road and if you don't prove you've got your hands on the wheel, it disables itself for the drive (you need to park to reactivate it). No Tesla driver thinks autopilot is more than a lane and distance keeping assistance.
Autopilot is a marketing name, that's it.