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If I read the article it says autopilot, not FSD.

• palmotea 8mo ago
  > If I read the article it says autopilot, not FSD. What's the difference? And does it matter? Both are misleadingly named, per the OP: > In December 2025, a California judge ruled that Tesla’s use of “Autopilot” in its marketing was misleading and violated state law, calling “Full Self-Driving” a name that is “actually, unambiguously false.” > Just this week, Tesla avoided a 30-day California sales suspension only by agreeing to drop the “Autopilot” branding entirely. Tesla has since discontinued Autopilot as a standalone product in the U.S. and Canada. > This lands weight to one of the main arguments used in lawsuits since the landmark case: Tesla has been misleading customers into thinking that its driver assist features (Autopilot and FSD) are more capable than they are – leading drivers to pay less attention.
  • atonse 8mo ago
    I remember having this argument with a friend. My argument was that the idea that the name Autopilot is misleading comes not from Tesla naming it wrong, it comes from what most people think "Autopilots" on an aircraft do. (And that is probably good enough to argue in court, that it doesn't matter what's factually correct, it matters what people understand based on their knowledge) Autopilot on a Tesla historically did two things - traffic aware cruise control (keeps a gap from the car in front of you) and stays in its lane. If you tell it to, it can suggest and change lanes. In some cases, it'll also take an exit ramp. (which was called Navigate on Autopilot) Autopilots on planes roughly also do the same. They keep speed and heading, and will also change heading to follow a GPS flight plan. Pilots still take off and land the plane. (Like Tesla drivers still get you on the highway and off). Full Self Driving (to which they've now added the word "Supervised" probably from court cases but it always was quite obvious that it was supervised, you had to keep shaking the steering wheel to prove you were alert, same as with Autopilot btw), is a different AI model that even stops at traffic lights, navigates parking lots, everything. That's the true "summon my car from LA to NY" dream at least. So to answer your question, "What's the difference" – it's huge. And I think they've covered that in earlier court cases. But one could argue that maybe they should've restricted it to only highways maybe? (fewer traffic lights, no intersections), but I don't know the details of each recent crash.
    • roywiggins 8mo ago
      Airplane "autoland" goes back a ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland
    • Retric 8mo ago
      Autopilots do a lot more than that because flying an aircraft safely is a lot more complicated than turning a steering wheel left and right and accelerating or breaking. Tesla’s Autopilot being unable to swap from one road to another makes is way less capable than a decades old civilian autopilots which will get you to any arbitrary location as long as you have fuel. Calling the current FSD Autopilot would be overstating its capabilities, but reasonably fitting.
      • beering 8mo ago
        Doesn’t basic airplane autopilot just maintain flight level, speed, and heading? What are some other things it can do?
        • Retric 8mo ago
          Recover from upsets is the big thing. Maintaining flight level, speed, and heading while upside down isn’t acceptable. Levels of safety are another consideration, car autopilot’s don’t use multiple levels of redundancy on everything because they can stop without falling out of the sky.
          • ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
            That's still massively simpler than making a self-driving car. It's trivially easy to fly a plane in straight level flight, to the extent that you don't actually need any automation at all to do it. You simply trim the aircraft to fly in the attitude you want and over a reasonable timescale it will do just that.
            • Retric 8mo ago
  • dekhn 8mo ago
    Autopilot is similar to cruise control that is aware of other cars, and lane keeping. I would fully expect the sort of accident that happened to happen (drop phone, stop controlling vehicle, it continues through an intersection). FSD has much more sophisticated features, explicitly handling traffic stops and lights. I would not expect the sort of accident to happen with FSD. The fact that Tesla misleads consumers is a different issue from Autopilot and FSD being different.
    • jqpabc123 8mo ago
      Autopilot is similar to cruise control that is aware of other cars, and lane keeping. Thanks for explaining why labeling it "Autopilot" is misleading and deceptive.
      • omnimus 8mo ago
        This is not even funny anymore. You reap what you sow.
      • walletdrainer 8mo ago
        Is anyone actually being deceived? When you’re buying a Tesla, they definitely carefully explain these options to you.
    • FireBeyond 8mo ago
      > FSD has much more sophisticated features, explicitly handling traffic stops and lights. I would not expect the sort of accident to happen with FSD. FSD at one point had settings for whether it could roll through stop signs, or how much it could exceed the speed limit by. I've watched it interpret a railroad crossing as a weirdly malfunctioning red light with a convoy of intermittent trucks rolling by. It took the clearly delineated lanes of a roundabout as mere suggestions and has tried to barrel through them in a straight line. I'd love to know where your confidence stems from.
      • dekhn 8mo ago
        My confidence comes only from what I hear people doing with the system. I have zero experience with it and consider most of the PR from Tesla to be junk. "would not expect" is the way a cautious person demonstrates a lack of confidence.