A plane pilot knows very well what the limits of the autopilot are and what the passenger believes is irrelevant.
Conversely if too many/most car “autopilot” users believe it does more than what it really does then it’s dangerous.
In electrical engineering 600V is still “low voltage”. Any engineer in the field knows that so that’s fine right? But if someone sells “low voltage” electric toothbrush or hand warmer no normal person will think “it’s 600V, it will probably kill me”. When you sell something, what your target audience takes away from your advertisement matters. If they’re clearly confused and you aren’t clearing it up after so many years then “confusion” and misleading advertising are part of your sales strategy.
Nobody here on HN, because we're really into tech. Outside the tech world, I would guess that 50% of the population thinks that "autopilot" (on any device) means that no human is needed.
The fact is, there’s a lot of history and best practice around building safety critical systems that Tesla doesn’t follow.
Additionally, even with the practices they follow, they call a consumer facing product that isn’t really an autopilot “autopilot”, while focusing outbound comms on a beta product that is more like an autopilot, but not available to them.