[atonse]

My Tesla asks me every single minute to shake the steering wheel while on Autopilot. Are you telling me the guy fell asleep between one of those? Maybe, anything is possible.

Also we go through this every single time. Journalists often insist that Autopilot is a misleading name, when it is a PERFECT name for the feature. It is exactly like Autopilot on an aircraft.

Autopilot on an aircraft doesn't absolve the pilots from being at the wheel (yoke), nor does it automatically take off or land a plane. It is literally "I'll follow this heading and altitude until you tell me otherwise, and will make glide path and heading corrections as needed", which is EXACTLY what Tesla's Autopilot feature does. There are other warning systems for air collisions, etc.

Tesla has a name for their autonomous driving – it's called Full Self Driving. And it isn't out yet, to anyone.

The media needs to do a better job of not misunderstanding this feature, and better educating the public instead of just writing sensationalist articles.

[positr0n]

Ask the average person not interested in aviation what the autopilot does in an airplane. They will tell you "automatic pilot. It flies the plane."

Autopilot is technically correct, which is useless unless you are only selling it to aviation enthusiasts.

[atonse]

Which is why I comment that it is the job of the media to properly message this to the public, instead of hopping on the bandwagon of "The name is bad!!!"

Isn't that a big part of why the media even exists? To inform the populace?

[bradknowles]

So, you create a product. And you choose the name. And you feel like the name perfectly describes precisely what the product does.

Only problem is, 99% of the public doesn’t understand, and so they keep mis-using your product. And people keep dying as a result.

How is it the responsibility of the media to fix this problem for you?

Naming is hard, I get that. That’s why it is critical to get it right.

When it comes to products for the average consumer in this world, the name is the single most important thing that you have to get right. Nothing else matters if you can’t get the name right.

And in this case, “right” doesn’t mean whatever you want it to. In this case, “right” is defined by the customers and potential customers.

[w8vY7ER]

I could not agree more with this comment. As a fellow owner it's astonishing how much is incorrectly attributed to the brand instead of the operators of the vehicles in this kind of writing.