US moves closer to recalling Tesla’s self-driving software
I think one of Tesla's biggest problems with any of their autonomous systems is the names they give those systems. They confuse regulators, reporters, and consumers.Most reporters seem to confuse "autopilot" with "full self driving" or vice versa. It's not uncommon to see sentences like "Autopilot, a feature that costs $10k, is still in beta."Autopilot is cruise control that keeps you within a lane when it can. That's it. Other cars have it, and they're equally effective or ineffective.Full self driving, aside from being terrifying, does it all, and I suspect it's usually what regulators and reporters mean when they say "Autopilot."I think if Tesla had used "lane aware cruise control" as the name for "Autopilot", it'd have helped reduce the number of times people confuse the two.Frankly, as an owner of a Tesla that has both features, I wouldn't mind at all if both were pulled from the software. FSD is absolutely terrifying. I'd rather let my teenage son drive me than have FSD do it. Autopilot feels like a novelty. Given how frequently the car yells at you when you're not holding the wheel, it's hardly better than simple cruise control.