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Comment by dm319 | Hacker News Reader

Tesla keep repeating the 'if you use it as designed you won't have an issue'.

But they need to be honest with themselves - in the public's mindshare these are 'self-driving' vehicles, and there's no doubt that Tesla has benefited from the idea that Tesla cars have this technology and the corresponding image of their cars being a new generation of vehicle.

It isn't helped (or it is, depending on your perspective) by naming the system 'auto-pilot', which implies to the lay person an automatic system.

Really this isn't much more than lane-assist, adaptive cruise control and emergency braking, terms which do not imply you can delegate control to a computer.

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The problem isn't that Tesla isn't being reasonable, the problem is that the public doesn't have the attention span to try to understand a more nuanced picture. People just don't want to hear that they're still driving the car, they want to deal with cars that drive themselves, whether to say it's a great thing or to say it's a scourge.

There's really only so far Tesla can go in its attempts to educate the public. In fact, they've been strenuously stating, over and over again, that these aren't self-driving cars. Autopilot as a name for the technology is in line with how it's used and expected to perform in commercial airplanes. You still have to know how to fly the plane and you still need to stay vigilant.

There's really only so far Tesla can go in its attempts to educate the public.

Thankfully, they have a long way to go before they reach the limits of how far "only so far" is.

In fact, they've been strenuously stating, over and over again, that these aren't self-driving cars.

The first link I came to when searching "tesla fully automated hardware" was this: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now... I read the page twice, and didn't see a single outright statement that the cars aren't self-driving. Oh, I could infer it, but Tesla never came right out and said it, let alone "strenuously".

EDIT: because my search string was a bit loaded, in that I knew it would find the link I'm looking for, let's be more fair with:

"tesla fully automated driving" - the link above is the first listing

"tesla autonomous driving" - the link above is the 2nd link.

In summary, should I care to know more about Teslas and their autonomous driving abilities, I will likely be led to a page that never mentions that these cars can't drive themselves, but strongly implies that they can.

In any other assisted driving, the system deactivates when it suspects the driver is not paying attention. Not issue impotent warnings.

>In fact, they've been strenuously stating, over and over again, that these aren't self-driving cars.

The Tesla fans keep repeating this, but it flies in the face of the description of Autopilot on Tesla's website. I can't tell if they are being deliberately ignorant, or what. But the fact that Tesla claims you can press a button and summon your car, at least in my mind, says "cars that drive themselves".

> In fact, they've been strenuously stating, over and over again, that these aren't self-driving cars.

They only state that in response to "Tesla car involved in crash"-style reports. Otherwise, the messaging they send out is "our cars are basically self-driving." At best, Tesla is guilty of sending out severely mixed messaging, and at worst, they're lying to people and claiming that it's not lying because there is a footnote that's telling the truth (that is designed so that no one will see it).

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