Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Ask 99 out of 100 people who aren't pilots, but who might be Tesla customers, and see if they can recite what you wrote below:
While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants.
And how do you know all that? Because you were trained accordingly.
I'm not saying Tesla shouldn't offer the feature in their cars. I'm saying they shouldn't have named it after a feature that people think allows pilots to party with the flight attendants.
Shouldn't what matters be how many people become actual Tesla owners using autopilot without realising this? For that metric, I suspect the answer is much closer to 0.
It's not clear that the crashes have been people who misunderstood the capability of the system. To me, it seems more likely that they got lazy and put a bit too much faith into it.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, just that it's a lot more complicated than what Tesla decided to name the feature. I think the accidents that have occurred would have occurred regardless of what they named it.
Ask 99 out of 100 people who aren't pilots, but who might be Tesla customers, and see if they can recite what you wrote below:
While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants.
And how do you know all that? Because you were trained accordingly.
I'm not saying Tesla shouldn't offer the feature in their cars. I'm saying they shouldn't have named it after a feature that people think allows pilots to party with the flight attendants.