I think this is just because Elon promised and sold it back in the day, couldn't actually deliver so now with some smart wording he has 'delivered'. No need for refunds.
But when full self driving is not actually full or self driven... Something should be done. It's driving assistance.
And then, when they say "you must keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road", people tend to understand that they risk a ticket because "legal reasons", but that otherwise it’s perfectly safe to ignore these requirements.
I think they mislead people on purpose, leveraging this ambiguous claim of "only for legal reasons", together with the misleading way they call it Auto Pilot, and now even Full Self Driving. How do they get away with it? How comes they don’t get sued?
All of Tesla's messaging around this is very much this, nudge nudge, wink wink.
When they initially introduced driver attention tracking, which they had to be pressured to do, they only checked every fifteen minutes.
Even on the actual order form, "features depend on regulatory approval".
For Summon, "have your car come to you while dealing with a fussy child" (while buried somewhere entirely different is a comment is "pay full attention to the vehicle").
"THE PERSON IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT IS ONLY THERE FOR LEGAL REASONS. HE IS NOT DOING ANYTHING. THE CAR IS DRIVING ITSELF."
Additionally, the "driver" also does not have their hands on the wheel as required.
I can imagine the dealership showing this to customers and them getting totally the wrong idea.
Edit: And I didn't even know what Veserv said below. Wow... That is like 737MAX levels of misleading.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23574198-elluswamy-d...
During filming the car crashed at least once. They fully mapped the route ahead of time and ran the route multiple times until it did not crash or require intervention.
There is a delightfuly cinical alternative interpretation that is also obviously true:
the legal reason is that without a human at the wheel it is Tesla who is legally responsible for any damge. Not so with a human at the wheel.
The autopilot is just another control, albeit an indirect one. When I’m flying on autopilot, I’m still logging flight time as “sole manipulator of the controls”.
Marketing it as “full self-driving” is something else entirely, IMO.
On the road you've always got the risk that a Tesla on Autopilot will freak out over the shadow of a telephone wire across the road and panic brake to a complete stop on a 70mph motorway.
However the average user does have a different idea of this as others have pointed out, and Tesla is marketing this to the general public, not knowledgeable pilots.
Oh wait, no, drivers get half an hour to demonstrate they won't immediately kill someone when driving, and routinely don't even know how their car's mirror dimmer works.
So maybe these contexts should stop being compared, because it's dishonest to do so.
All autopilot knowledge I got was from my own reading the manuals. I assume there's the same information available from Tesla on it.
You can do it in that with an intensive course though if you take it slow it can take longer.
In an aircraft, they clear their path with traffic control, set up the autopilot, check in on it from time to time.
In a Tesla they enable Autopilot and then they watch for closed lanes, fire trucks, people on the road. They also have to take over immediately on deviations from the lane, and accelerate when it brakes for no reason.
For aircraft, there is a lot of buffer space. For cars, there is none. Should the aircraft autopilot malfunction, the pilot typically has minutes to spot the error before a failure occurs. A Tesla on Autopilot is routinely fractions of seconds away from a crash should it malfunction.
Which is exactly why the "you should be paying attention and ready to take over" argument is horse shit. You physically CANNOT. The car will give no warning it's getting itself into a dangerous situation and then just give up.
The car lets jesus take the wheel, but seriously.
> Sterling Archer : I thought you put it on autopilot!
>Rip Riley : It just maintains course and altitude! It doesn't know how to find THE ONLY AIRSTRIP WITHIN A THOUSAND MILES SO IT CAN LAND ITSELF WHEN IT NEEDS GAS!
Why would you attribute Tesla's autopilot with more abilities than the basis of the term?
>Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.
The fully attentive driver is important. In the Archer TV quote from above Rip, the pilot of the Loosey Goosey, has just been knocked unconscious for a number of hours.
I can reasonably argue that the man on the Clapham omnibus understands "autopilot" to mean little or no human intervention is expected.
Tesla apologist always try to make things up about autopilot to downplay the clearly irresponsible name.
In fact a lot of modern autopilots can take full control, find the nearest airport and land when the pilot becomes incapacitated.
https://www.wired.com/story/cirrus-garmin-vision-jet-autolan...
The "Safe return autoland" feature can be triggered by the passengers.
You should try not to be unconscious for too long, that's like, super bad for you.