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Comment by peeters | Hacker News Reader

I've always found that half the issue is with the name: Autopilot. On an airplane, autopilot means you can take your focus off of both the physical and mental act of moving the plane through the air, and if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react.

In a car, Tesla's Autopilot simply doesn't give you that. If you are reading and your autopilot exits, you could be dead before your focus can return to the road. Planes fly in wide open spaces far from hazards. Cars drive in busy, tight spaces where a fraction of a second lapse in control can be fatal.

I get that Tesla's implementation is analogous to what you find on a jet. But the environments make them very different. So start by dropping the name. It's not auto pilot, it's handsfree driving.

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I don't think this accurately considers how the term "autopilot" is actually used in aviation. Autopilot can mean anything from "hold a gyro estimated heading but not pitch or speed" to "maintain airspeed and follow the localizer down a glide slope while cross checking GPS and ILS."

> if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react.

Traffic avoidance is certainly one. Airspeed dropping while the autopilot tries to maintain altitude is another. This can result in a stall and complete loss of control under the wrong circumstances.

Autopilot does not mean "read a book and let the plane fly itself." You are always cross checking instruments, visually scanning for traffic, running checklists, rehearsing your next steps, etc.

You're absolutely right, but the issue isn't what an aircraft autopilot actually is. It's what the word "autopilot" evokes in the minds of the non-pilot public. To them, autopilot means fully automated with no oversight. ("Planes fly themselves!" and other such nonsense.)

Please don’t force marketing to conform to the lowest common denominator.

People have some responsibility to educate themselves about the products they’re using.

You are being ridiculous.

The definition of autopilot has been this way for decades. You could literally ask anyone of any age what it means and everyone would have the same answer.

That's not true.

The lowest common denominator is driving. A driver's license is way easier to obtain than a pilot's license.

It doesn't matter how it works in aviation. It matters how people think it works in aviation.

There was nothing OK about Tesla calling their system "Autopilot."

> Airspeed dropping while the autopilot tries to maintain altitude is another. This can result in a stall and complete loss of control under the wrong circumstances.

This happened to me in X-Plane (sim) the first time I used autopilot. I had dialled in a rate of climb the plane couldn't maintain. Very hard to recover from a stall when the elevator trim is set fully nose up.

I wish Tesla called something like driver assist. I use it for 90% of my commute and it is super helpful, but I would never pick a name for it of auto-pilot.

But that's the term other manufacturers use (for similar features) so Tesla wouldn't have a "unique" feature anymore. A lot of their marketing revolves around offering a product none of the big manufacturers offer.

Autopilot in planes can be used, and often is used, in cases of VFR flight in which see-and-avoid is a requirement. Constant surveillance of the aircraft's surroundings is important. When it isn't done, midairs happen.

This should only be the case if you have lost your radio or have utterly incompetent air traffic control. It could also be the case if you're in class G airspace or in some BFE remote area without a tower, but meh. As stated elsewhere, autopilot on planes is pretty much not at all what most people think of as "auto-pilot". The pilots still are doing their instrument scan, and they're still maintaining situational awareness, but they know that the plane should maintain heading, altitude, and airspeed.

Source: Have private pilot's license and flew the Shadow 200 TUAV for the US Army. It is a VFR rated airframe that is flown 100% IFR, by nature of it being an ~11ft x 3.5ft x 2ft drone.

That's a special case, however. See-and-avoid except in specialized scenarios is what the Level-3 designation of driving-assistance systems is about, something that Tesla has not achieved so far.

Not that special of a case. There's around 10-11 million VFR flights per year, versus around 15-16 million IFR flights, according to this FAA doc[0]

How many of those VFR flights have/use autopilot during their flight, I can't say, but basic autopilot systems for GA planes have gotten pretty affordable, so I would expect there's at least hundreds of flights any given day where a VFR pilot engages an autopilot during the flight.

The main difference is that none of those VFR flights are big airliners with hundreds of passengers. For those who don't know the difference, an oversimplification would be VFR = pilot is 99% in charge, with very little assistance from air traffic controllers outside of special controlled airspace, IFR = controllers are giving the pilot very detailed instructions for the entire flight. And it's pretty much one or the other.

[0] PDF: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/media/Air_Tra...

A system with lane keeping and traffic-aware cruise control corresponds pretty well to a simple two or three-axis airplane autopilot that just holds heading and altitude.

Tesla makes cars not planes.

And they do so for the general public not just for pilots. And so it's appropriate that you use the general public definition of autopilot. Which is a fully automated, hands free system.

People keep saying that but I don’t buy it. For example, “to do something on autopilot” is a common idiom meaning that you did something reflexively without thinking, often with bad results.

Maybe if you're out driving on a salt lake bed with no other vehicles or structures around.

> I've always found that half the issue is with the name: Autopilot. ...In a car, Tesla's system simply doesn't give you that [taking your focus off]

Yes, exactly. It's a level-2 ADAS - it's about helping you deliver correct inputs to the car, not about autonomous driving in any real sense - regardless of how advanced it might be in a technical sense, or how well-behaving in a best-case scenario! More like the fly-by-wire system in an aircraft than the "autopilot".

And I know that the users are supposed to be aware of this, but Tesla's marketing on this issue is far from consistent, in all sorts of ways. They're doing their users a pretty big disservice.

I think the issue is that most people have a misconception about autopilot in a plane due to movies.

Real autopilots don't work like that, they are typically extremely simple and in many cases, mechanical PID loops. 99% of all autopilots have almost zero intelligence nor electronic sensors of any kind. Only the best of the best, like CAT3 autoland systems are anything close to what you see in the movies.

The term autopilot was first used in 1914.

Over a hundred years of the general public being educated about what that word means. So pretty sure it predates its use in movies.

Unfortunately people buy on promises, marketing guys know that, and Elon - among other things - is a marketing person. The promise of 'self driving' was too appealing to be left unspent.

Ethically discussable, but that's how things seems to work.

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