[IdSayThatllDoIt]

I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that.

"[Plaintiffs] claimed Tesla’s Autopilot technology was flawed and deceptively marketed."

[close04]

> I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that.

It's only fair. If the name was fine when it was attracting the buyers who were mislead about the real capabilities, it must be fine when it causing the same to jurors.

There's another similar argument to be made about the massive amount awarded as damages, which maybe will be lowered on appeal. If people (Tesla included) can make the argument that when a car learns something or gets an "IQ" improvement they all do, then it stands to reason that when one car is dangerous they all are (or were, even for a time). There are millions of Teslas on the road today so proportionally it's a low amount per unsafe car.

[Hamuko]

"Autopilot" isn't even the most egregious Tesla marketing term since that honour goes to "Full Self-Driving", which according to the fine text "[does] not make the vehicle autonomous".

Tesla's self-driving advertising is all fucking garbage and then some George McGee browses Facebook while believing that his car is driving itself.

[ratelimitsteve]

do you think they heard "autopilot" or "full self driving"?

[mort96]

I don't think these terms are meaningfully different in the heads of most people.

I know autopilot in airplanes is a set of assistive systems which don't remotely pretend to replace or obsolete humans. But that's not typically how it's used colloquially, and Tesla's marketing benefits heavily from the colloquial use of "autopilot" as something that can pilot a vehicle autonomously.

[MBCook]

You really think the defense wouldn’t have objected if the wrong term was used, or that the judge would allow its continued use?

[ajross]

As gets pointed out ad nauseum, the very first "cruise control" product in cars was in fact called "Auto-Pilot". Also real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free.

This is a fake argument (post hoc rationalization): It invents a meaning to a phrase that seems reasonable but that has never been rigorously applied ever, and demands that one speaker, and only that one speaker, adhere to the ad hoc standard.

[JumpCrisscross]

> real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free

Pilot here. If my G1000’s autopilot were flying and I dropped my phone, I’d pick it up. If my Subaru’s lane-keeping were engaged and I dropped me phone, I might try to feel around for it, but I would not go spelunking for several seconds.

[aaomidi]

That’s why we have a jury.

Autopilot quite literally means automatic pilot. Not “okay well maybe sometimes it’s automatic”.

This is why a jury is made up of the average person. The technical details of the language simply does not matter.

[gamblor956]

The first cruise control system in cars was released in 1908, before planes and was called a "governor." It maintained throttle position.

The first modern cruise control (tied to speed) was released in 1948, and was called a "speedostat." The first commercial use of the speedostat was in 1958, where the speedostat was called "Auto Pilot" in select Chrylser luxury models. Chrysler almost immediately renamed "autopilot" to "cruise-control" the following year in 1959, because the use of the term "auto pilot" was deemed misleading (airplane autopilots in 1959 could maintain speed and heading).

Or in other words...the history of cruise control is that the name "auto pilot" was explicitly rejected because of the dangerous connotations the term implied about the vehicle's capabilities.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sightless-visionar...

[tzs]

The market Tesla is advertising to is not airplane pilots. It is the general car buying public.

If they are using any terms in their ads in ways other than the way the people the ads are aimed at (the general car buying public) can reasonably be expected to understand them, then I'd expect that could be considered to be negligent.

Much of the general public is going to get their entire idea of what an autopilot can do from what autopilots do in fiction.

[metabagel]

The dictionary definition for Americans is:

> A navigation mechanism, as on an aircraft, that automatically maintains a preset course.

https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic+pilot

Note that “autopilot” and “automatic pilot” are synonyms.

https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Autopilot

An autopilot is supposed to be an automatic system, which doesn’t imply supervision.

https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic

> Self-regulating: an automatic washing machine.

[EA-3167]

As is also pointed out ad nauseam, the claims made about autopilot (Tesla) go far beyond the name, partly because they sold a lot of cars on lies about imminent "FSD" and partly because as always Elon Musk can't keep his mouth shut. The issue isn't just the name, it's that the name was part of a full-court-press to mislead customers and probably regulators.

[guywithahat]

It's also worth mentioning he would have been required to keep his hands on the wheel while using autopilot, or else it starts beeping at you and eventually disables the feature entirely. The system makes it very clear you're still in control, and it will permanently disable itself if it thinks you're not paying attention too many times (you get 5 strikes for your ownership duration).

[cosmicgadget]

Is there any contextual difference between the first instance of cruise control (which has since been relabeled cruise control, perhaps with reason), automatic flight control, and a company whose CEO and fanboys incessantly talk about vehicle autonomy?