Ask the average Aussie in the street what ‘autopilot’ means and the overwhelming majority would respond with an answer based on the concept that we know and understand from the way an airliner works. That is, the pilot can set some controls and effectively get up and leave the flight deck, while the plane flies itself. Now, there’s an element of simplicity to that explanation above, but the basics of it stand in regard to what non-pilots think autopilot really is.

As we know now, that concept doesn’t quite work down here on level ground, and a recent ruling in the state of California has forced Tesla to acknowledge the confusion caused by its naming convention.

As reported today by Car And Driver in the United States, Tesla is changing the name of its driver assistance features after the California Department of Motor Vehicles threatened to take away its dealer licence. The report states that ‘California had previously ruled that the “Autopilot” and “full Self Driving” names misrepresented the systems’ capabilities, violating state law’.

1

As such, Tesla has decided that ‘Full Self Driving’ will now carry the suffix ‘Supervised’ in all marketing material, while ‘Autopilot’ has been renamed ‘Traffic Aware Cruise Control’. In other words, Tesla has acknowledged that the general public – who buys new cars – is being confused by what the system is and what the system can do.

On one hand, we suspected this would always have to happen, given Tesla’s use of the terms for almost a decade, despite the fact that various levels of human interaction are required in order for the systems to keep working. Even Tesla’s most advanced self-driving system, which is currently Level 2, demands that the driver pay full attention to the road ahead for it to continue to function.

While the ruling pertained specifically to the state of California, Car and Driver reports that Tesla will adopt the new naming convention even outside the west coast state. The outlet reported that ‘Tesla will now refer to the systems by new names, even outside California, and the changes appear to have already taken place on Tesla’s website’.