Is Autopilot different than cruise control? Is it used differently?

If they're not the same thing why equate them?

They are very similar in my view: they automate part of driving to reduce load on the driver. Traditional cruise control just maintains velocity. My Subaru's adaptive cruise control maintains velocity and controls distance relative to the car ahead. Tesla also keeps your car centered in lane, but is otherwise just adaptive cruise control. There's some more features in the "self-driving" cars, like auto-parking and overtaking - I don't have much experience with those, I've only used non-self-driving Tesla autopilot. For the normal Tesla autopilot, though, "adaptive cruise control plus lane-centering" seems to accurately describe it.

Yes so technically, and as marketed, they are not the same. A dumb setting that fixes velocity is not the same, in any way, as a sophisticated self-driving mechanism that aims to recognize the world around it and adjust multiple parameters dynamically. More surface area for errors, and a misguided sense in the driver that their car is smart and can manage this process itself without the same attention as a fixed-speed (and nothing else), dumb cruise control

> A dumb setting that fixes velocity is not the same, in any way, as a sophisticated self-driving mechanism that aims to recognize the world around it and adjust multiple parameters dynamically.

Except plenty of modern cars don't just have fixed velocity cruise control. They have adaptive cruise control that will speed up or slow down to match the velocity of the car ahead of you. They also have lane centering that will keep your car in its lane. That sounds an awful lot like Teslas.

Expectations matter. Even if the exact same thing would be sold under different names, calling it autopilot/self-driving is the one that should be called out.