But it is like an autopilot in planes. Autopilot in planes does not do anything particularly complicated; it mostly just keeps it heading in one direction. The next part of this discourse that I've seen played out elsewhere on HN is where someone mentions that the public perception of the word "autopilot" is that it flies the plane all by itself in a rather intelligent manner. That's what Tesla is leveraging by calling it "autopilot".

The autopilot in modern planes does a lot more than just keeping the plane flying in one direction. You can get a plane land on autopilot (well up to like 1 or 2 minutes before touchdown). You can make it increase altitude automatically at a certain waypoint, decrease to a different flightlevel at a certain waypoint, and adjust speed. It monitors pilot input and intervenes if the pilot tries to do something "stupid." Basically, an autopilot in the planes is more than just a cruise control for headings. It can fly from point A to B with some intervention (like changing some data based on what ATC gave you).

The cruise control in Teslas cannot (yet?) drive you from point A to point B or even keep you driving in one direction forever without you holding the steering wheel occasionally or even hitting other objects. It can (just like cruise control in other cars) warn you if you are about to do something stupid (e.g. leaving the lane, about to hit an object etc.).

This is like people using foglights in cities at night to see better. You can use it for that, but it isn't made for that purpose. A light meant for FOG or other scenarios where the car itself is hard to see and not for you to light up everything in front of you (as it is quite bright if not used in fog).

A significant advantage aircraft on autopilot have is that the majority of the aircraft routinely using autopilot are flying under Instrument Flight Rules [IFR] and can rely on Air Traffic Control to provide separation from other aircraft.

Because of this, an aircraft under autopilot (especially one ascending and descending on its own) doesn't need to worry about hitting things. There is usually a distance of 3-5 miles¹ between the aircraft and other hard objects.

I would say calling the Tesla system an Autopilot is vastly understating its abilities.

¹ http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2806/how-much-is...

autopilots can land an aircraft which is a much more complicated process than station keeping.

Autopilot in Teslas can park the car...

Most planes does have the ability to land themselves. This is called autoland.