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Comment by junon | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a fan of Tesla personally but it is worth mentioning that "autopilot" and "self driving" are not the same. Autopilot is, and has always been, cruise control on steroids. Full self driving hasn't reached the consumer market. To expect your Tesla to be that is lying to yourself.

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Meanwhile, Tesla seems to be using them nearly interchangeably in its marketing.

https://www.tesla.com/support/full-self-driving-computer

Tesla attempts to bury the lead by saying drivers shouldn't use these features without being "fully attentive" but uses names like "Full Self-Driving" all over their marketing material.

https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot

Elon has also publicized cases where users filmed themselves not being attentive.

https://nypost.com/2019/05/10/elon-musk-weighs-in-on-porn-fi...

Tesla itself has marketing material that's even worse[1].

[1] https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...

> To expect your Tesla to be that is lying to yourself.

No, it's more simple: Tesla has been lying to you. Musk has been claiming full self driving "next year" for nine years:

https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...

Five years ago Tesla claimed that all cars being produced had the "hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver".

That was lie too:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...

Doesn't Tesla have beta software the driver can turn on with the name "Full Self Driving"? And isn't it intended to be used, "beta tested", on public roads?

Apparently they came out and said that "Full Self Driving™" isn't supposed to be understood as full self driving.

Ah, the Wyngz of the AI industry

Its also worth pointing out what feature set you get with "Autopilot" and even how well those features operate varies a lot depending what country you are in. In the USA, it's gone quite a bit beyond just cruise control on steroids, and will now follow _any_ road no matter how curvy so long as there is a painted center line. In other words, you can turn it on outside schools, in complex urban neighborhoods etc and it will just keep following the road until you disable it or the painted line stops.

In many European countries, the system is restricted to a much more traditional lane assist and does not follow tight bends like this. I have a Model 3 with the standard fit "Autopilot" (not FSD) in US and have tried same model in the UK.

If you follow Bjorn Nyland on YouTube (popular electric car YouTuber), he also recently discovered how much more advanced "Autopilot" is on the American cars when he drove a US import in Thailand and compared to his previous Norwegian Tesla, despite feature being labelled the same.

This all makes having any kind of reasonable discussion on the internet about it really, really hard.

My car's cruise control turns on even without a painted centre line.

To complicate matters further, conventional Traffic Aware Cruise is technically the third driver assist mode Tesla offer in their cars in addition to "AP"/"FSD", this of course also works without the painted line.

I think Elon was the one doing the lying.

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