Airplanes have autopilot and no one thinks that means there’s no pilot in front. Sure some drivers test the limit of their Tesla, just like some drivers test the limit of their Porsche or Ferrari.
Similar autopilot for cars does not make people think about a card that drives itself but the driver must also be 100% concentrated on the road, the name implies something different and Tesla marketing knows that , the fans will try now to defend this bad choice with some bad examples from aviation, you need to go and ask people on the street what a car with an autopilot should be capable of.
there is an inherent tradeoff between accessibility and precision in language. can we err a little bit on the side of precision in a technical field?
When you're marketing it to the public, it's best to worry a little about how terms will be interpreted by laypeople, especially if said laypeople's lives are in the balance.
Unless we expect the same rigor of people operating a vehicle, advertising matters. There aren't exactly a lot of pilots who will take the hand of the wheel and read a comic because they mistake the capabilities of the plane
An airliner's autopilot can do this for phases of the flight, backed up by ATC, collision warning systems, height over ground and the relative emptiness of the sky.
In other situations, it needs close supervision too, but the first case probably leads the general public to associate the term with "standby".
Airpline autopilot can have a standby human operator, with more than a second transition time.
If I understand you right, the answer is "in the theoretical context"?
1. Maintains a planned course without responding to obstacles.
2. Allows the pilots to safely take their hands off the controls and focus their attention elsewhere, such as on the radio.
Tesla autopilot is similar in property (1), but different in property (2) because aircraft are 'protected' by the Big Sky Theory.
Pilots are also trained extensively on its capabilities and limits (and all other 'auto-' systems on airplanes).
If we're going to make that comparison, then we should also factor in the fact that you're not going to be allowed to use an aircraft autopilot without first being trained on its operation, limitations, etc.
The nicer thing in the air is that, if autopilot fails, you're typically thousands of feet up.
Nobody's mentioning that autopilot in airplanes does nothing for collision avoidance. GCAS is collision avoidance and had its issues, but is considered well past autopilot.
I'm not sure "nicer" is really the right word, here. I get what you're saying- there's time to react. But, that is time to react before you hit the ground. Not quite "nice".