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I think Tesla is losing out here by calling what is little more than adaptive cruise control plus lanekeeping "autopilot." Adaptive cruise control + lanekeeping

I think Tesla is losing out here by calling what is little more than adaptive cruise control plus lanekeeping "autopilot." Adaptive cruise control + lanekeeping + collision avoidance is available on a ton of cars now, even economy cars, and it works great. I regularly make a ~200 mile drive on the Honda system and it is 100% the whole way. But when you sell it as Autopilot instead of driver assist, people have much higher expectations and blame your car rather than the driver - though there very well could be serious problems with the Tesla implementation. Lanekeeping is actually very nice. The system in Teslas and most (all?) others do require you to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention, but having to constantly manually steer the car is much more fatiguing than you would think. It's really annoying to drive cars without lanekeeping now.

iainmerrick 9y ago
My concern is, if you have both cruise control and lanekeeping, what's left to keep your attention and stop you zoning out? I don't find steering onerous, but it requires just enough attention to keep you alert. (I've never used a lanekeeping system, though. Maybe I'd like it, I dunno)
- pfooti 9y ago
  I use lanekeeping on the freeway, usually with adaptive cruise control as well (subaru). I focus more on the Big Picture of all the cars around me, can see further and have a better sense of who is doing what. That's anecdotal, of course, and could well be placebo effect, but I still pay a lot of attention to the road. Plus, lanekeeping can be really annoying if you rely on it all the time. The car sometimes tends to drift back and forth in a lane a little between corrections, instead of just going straight. So: you're still steering. It's just that you're steering less and have a defense in depth against loss of focus, and can drive without exhausting yourself.

iainmerrick 9y ago

My concern is, if you have both cruise control and lanekeeping, what's left to keep your attention and stop you zoning out? I don't find steering onerous, but it requires just enough attention to keep you alert. (I've never used a lanekeeping system, though. Maybe I'd like it, I dunno)

pfooti 9y ago
I use lanekeeping on the freeway, usually with adaptive cruise control as well (subaru). I focus more on the Big Picture of all the cars around me, can see further and have a better sense of who is doing what. That's anecdotal, of course, and could well be placebo effect, but I still pay a lot of attention to the road. Plus, lanekeeping can be really annoying if you rely on it all the time. The car sometimes tends to drift back and forth in a lane a little between corrections, instead of just going straight. So: you're still steering. It's just that you're steering less and have a defense in depth against loss of focus, and can drive without exhausting yourself.