If you want to be maximally pedantic, advanced autopilots are indeed capable of flying the plane by themselves. Modern commercial and military aircraft can tak

If you want to be maximally pedantic, advanced autopilots are indeed capable of flying the plane by themselves. Modern commercial and military aircraft can take off, fly a route, and put the plane back on the ground, all by themselves. And autonomously flying a route is not unusual at all even in better-equipped small aircraft. http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1026435 http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1026435 Autoland has been around for more than 80 years and been used commercially for 60 of those. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland. It's pretty obvious what Tesla is getting at when they are advertising "every car sold with self-driving hardware". The asterisk is of course that the hardware is self-driving capable, but the software isn't. But it's not hard to see where people are getting that idea from - it's Tesla's advertising and sales material.