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Am I missing something with this argument? It's consistently made on these anti-Tesla threads here and on Reddit, but from my understanding an aircraft's autopi

Am I missing something with this argument? It's consistently made on these anti-Tesla threads here and on Reddit, but from my understanding an aircraft's autopilot is actually dumber than Tesla's. You set bearing, altitude, and speed and the plane will adjust to and keep that course—that's it. Some will land in optimal conditions, but they're unable to taxi. Also a great deal of plane crashes are due to "handoff" issues. So it seems to me that Tesla's auto-pilot is aptly named.

detaro 10y ago
> You set bearing, altitude, and speed and the plane will adjust to and keep that course—that's it. And that's a very useful and safe way to get a plane from A to B, given the amount of route planning and air traffic control in modern aviation. An autopilot can generally provide ample warning of situations it can't handle, and a plane at cruise altitude has quite a bit of room for recoverable error. Until we have traffic control on our highways that makes sure our cars know about obstacles early enough, the same basic features are not enough to provide the same experience for a car.
ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
The problem with the naming has nothing to do with the technical capabilities, but an understanding of how that will impact human-machine interaction. You are absolutely right that aircraft autopilot is a lot "dumber" in a sense. But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations. By naming the system autopilot, Tesla has also created that same expectation with their customers. Not only that, but it has at best turned a blind eye to reports and videos and stories of customers who willfully take their hands of the wheel/sit in the back seat/etc. and at worst encouraged an erroneous public perception of how the autopilot system should be used. The issues you cited in handoffs with airplanes are far more complicated when it comes to cars, where decisions need necessarily to be taken in a much shorter period of time. But all of that seems really downplayed by Tesla marketing, which instead chooses to aggressively market just how close the system is to full driving autonomy, instead of more like a gentle aid to monotonous highway driving. The disconnect between their official documentation and their marketing is immense. That is what is potentially dangerous.
- mikeash 10y ago
  "But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations." What do you mean by this? There are many autopilots which won't take over all flight operations. Some only handle a single control axis, or two. More sophisticated ones can indeed handle everything, but that's not the only kind out there. If people think that's what all autopilots do, then the name is still a problem, but that's a bit different.
  - jedmeyers 10y ago
    An autopilot in newer light GA aircraft, like Bendix/King KAP-140, is able to hold/climb/descend to an altitude, and maintain heading based on the GPS input, so it does handle hands-on flight operations leaving the pilot to maintain awareness and program the GPS.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Looks like the KAP-140 comes in a single-axis version too.
- falcolas 10y ago
  To add to this, aircraft autopilots have one huge advantage over terrestrial based autopilots: the lack of need to manage collision avoidance. This is handled by ATC in most cases, with the pilot only offering minimal backup (in the case of flying through clouds, no backup). Any vehicular autopilot will need to reliably and consistently take care of collision avoidance. Any autopilot which wants to deem itself better than humans needs to do so much better than the equivalent human (and in a multitude of conditions, such as rain, snow, gravel, idiot drivers...). And this doesn't even consider handover times. An aircraft autopilot could fail completely, and the pilot would still have on the order of minutes to recover (assuming this occurs mid-flight, at cruising altitude). A car autopilot failure would give seconds, in the best case.
mikeash 10y ago
There are many degrees of autopilot. It can be something as simple as a connection between a gyrocompass and the rudder to hold heading, all the way up to a fully automatic takeoff, cruise, and landing system. The issue supposedly is that people have no idea about this, though, and think (because of movies?) that "autopilot" means it does everything. I'm still not sure if I believe it, but if so it has nothing to do with real autopilots.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  When I hear "autopilot" I think of movies where the pilot flicks a switch then gets up and has a coffee while chatting to an air hostess. Tesla's marketing many people know this is what people think of too, as the general population is never well versed in any area of speciality, by definition. Calling it autopilot is misleading. Cars aren't aircraft and drivers aren't pilots.
r_smart 10y ago
On top of other comments, don't forget that pilots are highly trained professionals, with a good knowledge of their vehicle and its operation. Very few drivers fall into that category.
Matthias247 10y ago
The difference is that the aircraft autopilot system does not have to be that intelligent. My imagination is that if I engage an aircraft autopilot system I'm free to do other stuff for >= 1minute, because it's enough to simply hold the direction and height. There are no sudden events. In a car however with the current state of automotive assisantance systems the timeframe for "doing other stuff" is less than 1 second because we have a fast varying environment there, including other cars (or pedestrians, bicycles, ...) taking sudden movements. Even many 5s situations can not be handled by todays assistance systems, like some surface conditions, traffic lights, track changes due to constructions, etc. Which in the end means you have to be constantly be in control of car, which is just not what "automatic" suggests.
fullshark 10y ago
You're missing the fact that most consumers are likely totally ignorant of this.
vkou 10y ago
And yet, we have Elon Musk saying that half a million people would have been saved by autopilot, if it were rolled out universally. [1] This doesn't sound like he's pitching a 'maintain speed and heading' device. So, can we rely on it to make the right decision in a safety-critical situation, or not? (The answer to this question seems to be 'yes, until there's an accident.') [1] https://electrek.co/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-save-life/ https://electrek.co/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-sav...
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Right, exactly. This is the same with their auto park / summon systems that can't tell whether they're plowing through a half-open garage door. All shiny and glittery world: "Press a button, walk inside, while car is putting itself away for you!" "Press a button as you walk out the front door and the car will pull up in front of you!" "Half a million lives could be saved by using our ever-so-safe autopilot system!" Cold reality, faced with liability and lawsuits: "Your fault. You didn't stand there and supervise the whole process!" "Your fault, it's not an autopilot that lets you not be in control of the vehicle, despite allowing you to go up to 15 minutes without touching the steering wheel" "Your fault, you hit the brakes with insufficient time to stop the vehicle before a collision. The vehicle wasn't under autopilot control at the time of the collision, so it doesn't count. The fact that you only hit the brakes because the vehicle was about to happily collide at speed is ... entirely ... separate, and unrelated!"

detaro 10y ago

> You set bearing, altitude, and speed and the plane will adjust to and keep that course—that's it. And that's a very useful and safe way to get a plane from A to B, given the amount of route planning and air traffic control in modern aviation. An autopilot can generally provide ample warning of situations it can't handle, and a plane at cruise altitude has quite a bit of room for recoverable error. Until we have traffic control on our highways that makes sure our cars know about obstacles early enough, the same basic features are not enough to provide the same experience for a car.

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago

The problem with the naming has nothing to do with the technical capabilities, but an understanding of how that will impact human-machine interaction. You are absolutely right that aircraft autopilot is a lot "dumber" in a sense. But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations. By naming the system autopilot, Tesla has also created that same expectation with their customers. Not only that, but it has at best turned a blind eye to reports and videos and stories of customers who willfully take their hands of the wheel/sit in the back seat/etc. and at worst encouraged an erroneous public perception of how the autopilot system should be used. The issues you cited in handoffs with airplanes are far more complicated when it comes to cars, where decisions need necessarily to be taken in a much shorter period of time. But all of that seems really downplayed by Tesla marketing, which instead chooses to aggressively market just how close the system is to full driving autonomy, instead of more like a gentle aid to monotonous highway driving. The disconnect between their official documentation and their marketing is immense. That is what is potentially dangerous.

mikeash 10y ago
"But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations." What do you mean by this? There are many autopilots which won't take over all flight operations. Some only handle a single control axis, or two. More sophisticated ones can indeed handle everything, but that's not the only kind out there. If people think that's what all autopilots do, then the name is still a problem, but that's a bit different.
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  An autopilot in newer light GA aircraft, like Bendix/King KAP-140, is able to hold/climb/descend to an altitude, and maintain heading based on the GPS input, so it does handle hands-on flight operations leaving the pilot to maintain awareness and program the GPS.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Looks like the KAP-140 comes in a single-axis version too.
falcolas 10y ago
To add to this, aircraft autopilots have one huge advantage over terrestrial based autopilots: the lack of need to manage collision avoidance. This is handled by ATC in most cases, with the pilot only offering minimal backup (in the case of flying through clouds, no backup). Any vehicular autopilot will need to reliably and consistently take care of collision avoidance. Any autopilot which wants to deem itself better than humans needs to do so much better than the equivalent human (and in a multitude of conditions, such as rain, snow, gravel, idiot drivers...). And this doesn't even consider handover times. An aircraft autopilot could fail completely, and the pilot would still have on the order of minutes to recover (assuming this occurs mid-flight, at cruising altitude). A car autopilot failure would give seconds, in the best case.

mikeash 10y ago

There are many degrees of autopilot. It can be something as simple as a connection between a gyrocompass and the rudder to hold heading, all the way up to a fully automatic takeoff, cruise, and landing system. The issue supposedly is that people have no idea about this, though, and think (because of movies?) that "autopilot" means it does everything. I'm still not sure if I believe it, but if so it has nothing to do with real autopilots.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
When I hear "autopilot" I think of movies where the pilot flicks a switch then gets up and has a coffee while chatting to an air hostess. Tesla's marketing many people know this is what people think of too, as the general population is never well versed in any area of speciality, by definition. Calling it autopilot is misleading. Cars aren't aircraft and drivers aren't pilots.

r_smart 10y ago

On top of other comments, don't forget that pilots are highly trained professionals, with a good knowledge of their vehicle and its operation. Very few drivers fall into that category.

Matthias247 10y ago

The difference is that the aircraft autopilot system does not have to be that intelligent. My imagination is that if I engage an aircraft autopilot system I'm free to do other stuff for >= 1minute, because it's enough to simply hold the direction and height. There are no sudden events. In a car however with the current state of automotive assisantance systems the timeframe for "doing other stuff" is less than 1 second because we have a fast varying environment there, including other cars (or pedestrians, bicycles, ...) taking sudden movements. Even many 5s situations can not be handled by todays assistance systems, like some surface conditions, traffic lights, track changes due to constructions, etc. Which in the end means you have to be constantly be in control of car, which is just not what "automatic" suggests.

fullshark 10y ago

You're missing the fact that most consumers are likely totally ignorant of this.

vkou 10y ago

And yet, we have Elon Musk saying that half a million people would have been saved by autopilot, if it were rolled out universally. [1] This doesn't sound like he's pitching a 'maintain speed and heading' device. So, can we rely on it to make the right decision in a safety-critical situation, or not? (The answer to this question seems to be 'yes, until there's an accident.') [1] https://electrek.co/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-save-life/ https://electrek.co/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-sav...

FireBeyond 10y ago
Right, exactly. This is the same with their auto park / summon systems that can't tell whether they're plowing through a half-open garage door. All shiny and glittery world: "Press a button, walk inside, while car is putting itself away for you!" "Press a button as you walk out the front door and the car will pull up in front of you!" "Half a million lives could be saved by using our ever-so-safe autopilot system!" Cold reality, faced with liability and lawsuits: "Your fault. You didn't stand there and supervise the whole process!" "Your fault, it's not an autopilot that lets you not be in control of the vehicle, despite allowing you to go up to 15 minutes without touching the steering wheel" "Your fault, you hit the brakes with insufficient time to stop the vehicle before a collision. The vehicle wasn't under autopilot control at the time of the collision, so it doesn't count. The fact that you only hit the brakes because the vehicle was about to happily collide at speed is ... entirely ... separate, and unrelated!"