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Comment by kllrnohj | Hacker News Reader

> I think the main point is to know the limitations of the technology and to deploy it appropriately.

Such as, for example, by not calling it "autopilot" or "full self driving"?

It may work somewhat like airplane autopilot, but the environments are not comparable. A plane has nothing to hit but terrain which is easily identified and almost all other obstacles in the air are transmitting their position.

It's entirely deceptive.

In addition, pilots are required to have thousands of hours of training for that specific model airplane. I'm sure the limitations of autopilot come up.

Meanwhile, in most US states, an adult can walk into a DMV, demonstrate the ability to turn on the vehicle and do a 3-point/k turn, and walk out with a license.

And at least in one state, all a kid needs is their parent to tell the DMV they can drive

[0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32329549/georgia-no-drive...

That's not that bad, Belgium used to have no driving licenses for normal cars (everyone could drive) and the accident figures were similar to neighbour countries.

I'll give you FSD, but autopilot makes sense to me as someone familiar with aviation.

How about "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."

Tesla Marketing: 2016

Sounds like trash, but then that's not relevant to what I said.

The important thing here is that for over half-a-decade, Tesla has been lying to its customers about its capabilities.

When in actuality, Tesla will reliably crash into pedestrians and stationary firetrucks. To the point where people at other companies are confident to make live-demos of this at electronic shows.

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Calling it "autopilot" or "fsd" isn't the problem. The problem is that Tesla actively lies about its capabilities to the public and its customers. It doesn't matter "how" they lie or exactly what weasel words they use. The issue is that they're liars.

We can tell them to change their name or change their marketing strategy. But as long as they're liars, they'll just find a new set of weasel words to continue their lies.

> Tesla Marketing: 2016

For reference, this same marketing video is still up on Tesla's site[1].

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

A small misunderstanding - "legal reasons" are that it is the person in the driver's seat who is legally liable for damage done while the car was driving itself, not Tesla.

Does it? What’s the expected response time on disengagement for a plane?

Is the average purchaser of autopilot familiar with aviation and the technical capabilities of an autopilot in that context?

I’m not familiar with aviation and the only reason I’m aware that airplane autopilot is actually not a self-flying system is because of Tesla and their weasel excuses for their reckless marketing.

Does autopilot make sense? Aviation autopilot seems to be many orders of magnitude more reliable than Tesla's autopilot.

In fact, autopilot in aviation contexts is regularly used when human pilots are worse, such as landing at airports that regularly experience fog & low visibility conditions. As in, autopilot is the fallback for humans, not the other way around.

Heck, aviation autopilot is now available for use in emergency landings ( https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-autoland-wins-202... ).

Compared to Tesla autopilot, these are seemingly two vastly unrelated situations.

Surely autopilot is an easier problem to solve compared to self-driving cars? Air traffic is controlled, road traffic is chaotic. Aerial vehicles move through what's essentially empty space with pretty much no obstacles, cars must navigate imperfect always changing urban mazes full of people whose actions are unpredictable.

And there is land infrastructure in place for autolanding, aiming localization etc.. Much different from roads.

FSD? Friendship drive?

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