How do you know what the population thinks? Have there been an polls done?

Because the original parent comment is using an analogy to aviation terms, and depending on a more than cursory understanding of the limits of an aircraft autopilot. I am willing to make a monetary bet most members of the population do not understand the precise limitations of an aircraft autopilot, though I admit I have not conducted a poll to verify this. I also think Tesla likely named it this to differentiate it from the competitions systems, and in my eyes it is pretty obvious what distinction they were aiming for most people to make.

I bet if I asked 10 people what is more autonomous, an autopilot or a copilot 10 out of 10 of them would say a copilot.

Id you'd asked me, I wouldve said the autopilot. Cause its more "automatic" and a co-pilot would still require me to be there, hence the "co".

But thats just how I understood it before.

I think Tesla probably called it 'autopilot' specifically to clarify the limitations - it just sets heading, speed, etc.

They should simply call it "Driver Assistance" which is very appropriate for such systems.

It's the same thing as putting "fat free" on the Twizzlers. It's technically true which means they can get away with it. Except that that probably kills more people than "autopilot" ever will.

It's not food companies' fault that the English word “fat” has multiple meanings and is the normal word for several of them.

You don't think they're intentionally using that word for precisely that reason?

But there's no other commonly-used word for it!

"Sugar free" (oops, not true)

"No calories" (not true again)

There are a hundred ways to say that something won't cause you to gain weight. They chose the one that sounds like it means that even though it doesn't, because it also has a different meaning which is technically true.