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Tesla and Autopilot Supplier Mobileye Split Up After Fatal Crash (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Tesla and Mobileye, one of the top suppliers to its Autopilot partial self-driving system, are parting ways in the wake of the May accident that killed an owner of one of its electric Model S sedans. Mobileye is considered a leader in developing the equipment that will be needed for fully self-driving cars. The Israeli tech company will continue to support and maintain current Tesla products, including upgrades that should help the Autopilot system with crash avoidance and to better allow the car to steer itself, said Chairman Amnon Shashua in releasing the company's second-quarter earnings Tuesday. Shashua said moving cars to higher levels of self-driving capability "is a paradigm shift both in terms of function complexity and the need to ensure an extremely high level of safety." He added there is "much at stake" in terms of Mobileye's reputation, and that it is best to end the relationship with Tesla by the end of the year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, meeting with reporters at the company's new battery Gigafactory outside Reno, indicated that Tesla can go forward without Mobileye. "Us parting ways was somewhat inevitable. There's nothing unexpected here from our standpoint," Musk said. "We're committed to autonomy. They'll go their way, and we'll go ours."
So basically my Tesla is now obsolete? Thanks Elon.
Impressed but not surprised Mobileye would ditch Tesla. If one of my customers was using my shit recklessly on public beta experiments that got people killed I would ditch them too.
The fact is, getting people to eat right and exercise regularly would save more lives then automated cars ever could. Why not focus on that?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I bought a car recently.
It has 'frontal collision avoidance' and 'speed limit reader' built in. It does that with a bit of lidar and a bit of camera work. Actually pretty cool CS wise.
The car companies have a real issue on their hands. Sun and temperature blindness. Twice already my car has freaked out and went into an error mode. The temp on the dashboard was easily over 120f (~50c) (the camera is behind the driver mirror). The camera freaked out and just stopped working. All of the other cameras that the car would let me see out of were smeary and 'grey'. You could tell the temp had basically made the sensor over sensitive. So the second I got a couple of reflections off a truck in front of me the system stopped working. Now some of you may be thinking 'oh just take it in'. Already done. 'common problem in the summer'. Bit or research on the internet? Same thing. Parked the thing in the garage and everything was fine again. Now these things are basically 'toys' in my car. But if they were important for real day to day usage I would be a bit more mad.
I am excited for the upcoming self driving car revolution. But it will be awhile. I would not buy one and rely on it too much today. They will need to put some very high end camera parts in these things. I am not seeing that today with the ones I have seen. Most are in the 720 and lower range with poor color contrast, and poor refresh. Little better than a cell phone camera from 10 years ago.
This sounds familiar. Oh yeah... Ford and Firestone parting ways because they were blaming each other for Explorer rollovers. It's funny how the rollovers continued after they put everything else but Firestones on them.
Full on autonomy is a pipe dream.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
It's out there and it's going to happen.
Because convince people to change their live styles (or religiously beliefs) is a hell lot harder than getting car driving automatically.
Sounds like you should have bought a Tesla instead.
Two musky stories in a row? Some PR firm must be getting some big dollars.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Disagree. Logic it through. Did Tesla or Mobileye make a mistake? Is one of them taking unnecessary risks?
Who is using lidar now? I thought everyone is still using only cameras, radar and sonar. Also as I understand it, part of the issue with tesla/mobileye is elon does not think lidar is necessary. I think he is wrong, and believe if the current systems had lidar, there would have been no death in florida.
why try to ban "assault rifles"
It has 'frontal collision avoidance' and 'speed limit reader' built in. It does that with a bit of lidar and a bit of camera work. Actually pretty cool CS wise.
First, you don't really have LIDAR in your car, not really.
The car companies aren't putting in the good stuff just yet, when they are able to at a reasonable price, this will all change...
It is worth noting that a real LIDAR unit costs more than a Tesla does...
Sorry. All I can hear is "mumble, mumble, grumble" with Elon's cock stabbing into your tonsils.
"The Israeli tech company will continue to support and maintain current Tesla products"
So they're going to remain "Just Friends".
Take it from me. Don't drag it out. What they need to say is, "Have a nice life".
No one cares about the death in Florida. People are too convinced that autonomous cars will save lives.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm not at all convinced that anything will change. Car companies have to be forced by the government to spend $5 on seat belts, they're always going to be looking for the absolute minimum cost to produce economy/midrange vehicles and full automation will never fit into that.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
both of those are real assists. if they work fine, if they don't then maybe you hit something faster, but in any case you wont be hitting something faster than if you didn't have those things installed on the car.
you can't buy a self driving car today anyways - and from this split I would say that the sensor provider and tesla had some issues about disagreeing about how to use them.. basically the sensor manufacturer doesn't want to get sued because tesla uses them in systems they are not made or rated for. the sensor manufacturer knows that the stuff in the tesla is not good enough for auto-driving, even if you can sort of hack together a beta that sort of works sometimes.
Two humans and one computer failed to avoid the collision. One human was at fault for failing to yield to oncoming traffic. Fatal accidents involving left hand turns are common.
About 100 people die every day on US roads. Beyond regretting that yet another person failed to yield while turning left in front of traffic and it resulted in a death what, exactly are we supposed to care about regarding that particular accident?
I don't know how many lives would be saved with autonomous vehicles, I only know that about 30,000 deaths a year on the roads are caused by human errors. Far more accidents involving serious injuries and billions of dollars in damage also occur each year due to human errors.
To quote Elon Musk:
“This was expected and will not have any material effect on our plans. MobilEye’s ability to evolve its technology is unfortunately negatively affected by having to support hundreds of models from legacy auto companies, resulting in a very high engineering drag coefficient. Tesla is laser-focused on achieving full self-driving capability on one integrated platform with an order of magnitude greater safety than the average manually driven car.”
This sounds quite reasonable to me. Tesla wants to go faster than anyone else in autopilot. Mobileye starts selling its chips to many car-makers. Mobileye is unwilling to make a special chip only for Tesla. Tesla then decides to come up with their own solution, using their in house chip expertise as well as possibly other companies' products (Nvidia perhaps?). This post is a subtle troll on Tesla.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
LIDAR is likely not the best tool for self-driving cars. It has problems in snow and rain. Radar and video are likely better, especially radar that makes a sparse point cloud, as Tesla's is going to do in the next update.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
One human was at fault for failing to yield to oncoming traffic.
100% Wrong. The truck was completely in the right. The road was completely clear of traffic when the truck made its turn. The moron in the lemon was speeding.
That's another thing. The speeding. Autopilot breaks the law and LOGS IT.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What does lidar give you that radar doesn't? Serious question.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The autopilot did not break any law. The driver broke a law. If we can't get simple things like that correct, there is no way to have a logical conversation or debate.
Where did the speed instruction come from? The driver's foot on the pedal?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's fooled by a mirror, by reflection, its fooled by lights coming on in a garage. It's clearly not fit for purpose. They need to add LIDAR, because any visual system would need to have a complete and total model of the world and everything it might see in it.
Musk says LIDAR doesn't work in the rain, but I've seen Google cars drive in the rain, so I'm skeptical. If its true then he could have both systems to overcome weaknesses in each one.
Either way, there are technical fixes and Musk has a way forward with this tech.
It cost 2x more than I wanted to spend and did not have the range I wanted.
LIDAR is fine in the snow/rain, it is all about having the right set of wavelengths...
A cheap unit isn't going to have that flexible of a sensor, but the good ones will.
Consider that a proper LIDAR can pickup speed bumps and potholes from 10,000 feet in the air, or buried IEDs from closer in... but they cost several hundred thousand dollars...
From 200 feet away rain and snow aren't going to cause them any issues.
But you are not going to put a $250,000 LIDAR unit on a $100,000 Tesla, now are you? :)
The $500 units they put on are cheap imitations of the real deal...
If we were going to ban guns as a public safety measure, we really should start with handguns - they don't look nearly as scary, but are responsible for the vast majority of gun-related deaths. And that holds true even if you only look at gun deaths caused by mass-shooters who own an "assault rifle". Handguns are after all a weapon specifically designed for killing civilians in urban environments in the most convenient manner possible.
Assault rifles and their kin on the other hand are optimized for killing armed and potentially lightly armored adversaries at medium range (out to a few hundred yards), and are drastic overkill for soft targets at closer range. Eliminating them primarily helps protect police and possibly gang members, not the general public.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The driver sets the maximum speed when they activate the autopilot, in much the same way as you set the speed when you use cruise control on any other car. Or are you saying speeding isn't the responsibility of any driver if they're using cruise control to break the limit?
Autopilot will slow down if there is traffic ahead, otherwise it travels at the speed set by the driver.
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
There's really no reason why both of them shouldn't be looked into. Yet one person can only focus on so many things.
great another clickbait title.... In reality Tesla already were planning on ditching them before the so called crash nonsense.. They already were upgrading their autopilot project and had already attracted developers and technicians before the (much hyped) news broke about the so called crash.. But now they media wants to spin it like it was because of the so called crash, as that is much more sensational than what actually is going on...
I think the name "autopilot" starts to suffer the same fate as the name "hacker": they both have a precise meaning, but in the general use by the public, the meaning has shifted
Hacker used to be someone who is good at McGuyvering, at finding creative uses, etc.
But the press ended up using it for Cracker, someone who just breaks into things, not necessarily showing any creativity.
Same happenned with Autopilot: in aviation, it is a very precise thing - an apparatus which can take care automatically of the small minute details of flying the plane. The human need to provide it an order (a destination) and then only watch over it and control that everything is going well, but not actually hold the commands themselves.
Nobody has ever deigned this for the whole crew to take a nap while it is on.
Same in a boat: the autopilot will keep a destination, so you don't need to hold the wheel. That doesn't mean that you should be napping, you still need to whatch out for dangers, obstacles, etc.
But suddenly, the general public has taken a different meaning: as you say, now the think of it as Chauffeur: the Chauffeur (not necessarily electronic, it can be a human) takes care of everything, while you can safely take a nap or whatch some harry potter.
Elon should have called it "Ship's Commander mode" (as the one which gives orders instead of holding the wheel) sound both mor awesome and a little bit less passive role for the driver.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Lasers, obviously!
I'm not at all convinced that anything will change. Car companies have to be forced by the government to spend $5 on seat belts, they're always going to be looking for the absolute minimum cost to produce economy/midrange vehicles and full automation will never fit into that.
Today there is hardly such a thing as an "economy" vehicle. The reason the average new car cost has risen to $30,000 is because much like cell phones, they're packed with dozens of "standard" features we never really even asked for.
And the overall cost of a car will become irrelevant once the concept of ownership becomes obsolete. Which it will.
A point cloud
Remember George Hotz?
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6...
He developed some self-driving technology and Elon offered him a job with a bonus if they developed technology independent of MobileEye. Elon has wanted to part ways with them for a while.
The accident gives him the excuse he needs.
Elon likes to do as much as possible in-house. You see that in both Tesla and SpaceX.
heh! Just last weekend, my dashboard mounted GPS screen actually *melted* (in Sedona, Arizona; standing in the sun all day). [I think the glue or something that held layers of the screen together came apart]. old-gen-Tom-Tom :-/
Really, many cars today "know" the speed limit. A friend's nissan versa tells her when the car is exceeding the limit. So shouldn't auto-pilot obey the limit automatically, which even econoboxes can somehow figure out.
Perhaps,
Tesla was not a big customer in terms of sales, but was a big customer in terms of promoting Mobileye's technnology.
There was a disconnect between Mobileye's roadmap and Tesla's.
With the recent crashes, the sign of the help from promotion was looking negative.
So, if Tesla is going to do something else, what might it be?
Add some other sensor like radar or lidar.
Surely, they already have more than one camera so they can triangulate to form a 3d model of what's out there.
If so, why did they drive under a truck.
Seems like the edges and reflectors on the side of the truck would have been recognized as an approaching collision.
I look forward to seeing a final NTSB report on that.
http://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/pr20160726.aspx
If they are currently running on one camera, perhaps Tesla should look to Mythology and find a multi-eyed creature and trademark the name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_many-eyed_creatures
Ownership won't become obsolete until automated car companies can have a car in your driveway five minutes before you open your front door. If people have to wait for a car they'd rather use their own.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Ok, but if I was going to set the car to speed I certainly wouldn't want the car logging it. How long before traffic enforcement starts using the log evidence against you in court? Right now it's difficult for them to get a conviction on anything less then 10 over because there are too many variables for it to hold up in court, but if Tesla is going to eliminate the variables then... you'd better just drive the speed limit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The truck driver was still at fault, it was his responsibility to make sure the road was clear before crossing it.
Ownership won't become obsolete until automated car companies can have a car in your driveway five minutes before you open your front door. If people have to wait for a car they'd rather use their own.
I'd "rather" not have to drive a car at all, and call for a chauffeur every morning to drive me to work. The reason millions of people don't have their own personal chauffeurs is the same exact reason car ownership will become obsolete and fairly quickly. You won't be able to afford it.
When autonomy is proven to be orders of magnitude safer than having a meatsack behind the wheel, insurance rates will adjust accordingly. Sure, you can choose to spend $2,000/month on human-powered car insurance for the privilege of still controlling your own vehicle, but who would want to do that when the next-gen autonomous ride service is ten times cheaper? Cost is king today. That is why you see Uber/Lyft fans wait for a car while the cab sitting right next to them is ignored.
What does lidar give you that radar doesn't? Serious question.
Far better resolution, for one thing. Radar is limited to the resolution obtainable by the radar frequency which, no matter how high it is, is lower than that of lidar. All things being equal, higher frequency means higher resolution. It also usually means less range and greater reflection vs. absorption.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A LIDAR can give you a higher resolution view due to its much smaller beamwidth. The RADAR pretty much gives you distance and velocity to things in front of it, it can't distinguish an overhead road sign from the broad side of a semi.
LIDAR is affected more by fog, rain and smoke in the air.
Ok well you wait for 20 minutes for a car every morning or operate on some pre-set schedule. I'd like to keep my own schedule.
Yes I would expect insurance for autonomous cars would drop to around $50 a year since the human is no longer responsible or able to control for anything that happens in a truly autonomous car. Insurance will protect the value of the property and nothing that may happen with it. Passenger not liable.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The road was clear enough for a slow accelerating semi to get its cab clear of the intersection. Had the driver been paying attention, they would have seen this occurring, and slowed down enough to not hit the vehicle. You say that the truck had a responsibility to make sure the road was clear before crossing it. Be that as it may (and given how far the truck got, it seems likely that the way was clear when he started), it in no way absolves the driver for failing to pay attention, or the vehicle for not seeing the truck.
Like really, if I wanted to travel like this I would take the bus now.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The autopilot systems on the newest commercial jets are capable of handling landings unassisted, at least, if everything is working. This is just not that hard a job any more.
I very well know that.
But still, the thing officially requires a human being to check it, and none of there is currently approved for total autonomous / "unmanned cockpit" for flying people around.
- It *could* fly people around autonomously.
- It *would* propbably fly poeple around in case of an emergency (e.g.: if both pilot an co-pilot are sick and unconscious)
- but normally we still require human attendance just in case, and not nap instead.
it's officially called an autopilot
That's the exact same situation with Tesla (and all the other brands featuring automatic lane following)
- It could drive around autonomously
- in case of emergency, it would probably drive people around (e.g.: if the driver is in an health emergency, se could theoriticaly push a "red button" that automatically sets the destination for autopilot to the nearest hospital and calls 911/112. Or at least the car could safely go park itself to the shoulder and call 911/112)
- but normally we still require a human to pay attention just in case, and not watch DVDs instead.
it was branded an autopilot by Elon
An Arduino with MultiWii (GPL'd) is enough to take a plane off from a field, fly waypoints and take pictures or drop bombs or what have you and then return to home and land again. And that's without any beacon signal from the ground.
And the official precise terminology for that is called an *Unmaned Aerial Vehicle*. (UAV) (Or drone in the common parlance) More precisely an *autonomous* one.
Just like google call their car "autonomous" or "driver-less". Not simply autopilot.
So clearly, the word "autopilot" covers a lot of ground.
...in the common parlance. Specialist tend to use words like "autonomous", "unmanned", etc. in more advanced cases to emphasis the difference.
And that's my point, average joe might confuse "autopilot" with "autonomous unmaned aerial vehicle" (or with "chauffeur" as aaarrrgggh mentionned above).
So although the name sounds reasonable to a specialist, it might get confused by non-nerds.
Elon should have called it "Ship's Commander mode" (as the one which gives orders instead of holding the wheel) sound both mor{e} awesome and a little bit less passive role for the driver.
Do you know what you call a simple computer on a boat which maintains your heading, and does nothing else? Yep, you guessed it, that's an autopilot.
Yup. I even mentioned it in my above post.
And that's why I think "Ship's Commander mode" would be adapted. I would convey in layman's term what they though when saying "autopilot".
The truth is that you cannot get autopilot even activated without a safety lecture, and if you willfully ignore the admonitions of the creators and then turn on a feature that is dangerous both to you and others if you misuse it, you deserve to die in a fireball and the only tragedy is that you may take others with you.
Perhaps someday, the use of autopilot-like capabilities will be regulated, requiring different driver licenses (like manual vs. automatic gear shift). You'll need to pass your license using a car with advanced assistance in order to learn to properly use it (just like manual shift).
Or, maybe the whole thing will just evolved into a massive multiplayer competition for Darwin Awards(*)
(*): ...in the hypothesis that you only have autopilot driver napping behind the wheel and autopilot driver paying attention and at least managing to avoid being taken with the idiots causing accidents.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
MobileEye has likely patented the autopilot feature, which would make replacing it in the Tesla vehicles impossible without violating their patient.
Frickin' Lasers, obviously!
FTFY.
(Maybe Tesla should rename the model to "Shark".)
Tesla is working on making the radar create a sparse point cloud for their next software update. Lidar makes a much more detailed point cloud. However, lidar can be blocked by snow and rain, whereas radar is less affected by these things.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
To call it "Autopilot" is a pernicious deception. Teslas don't fly. The proper aviation context is taxiing, and even it's hands-off from rotation to rollout, taxiing still requires eyeballs out the window and a hand on the tiller (or feet on the rudders.) The aerospace community knows better. There has never been a serious proposal to automate the taxiing task.
Maybe some people live in cities with proper on and off ramps where a semi-trailer can fully merge and not interrupt the flow of traffic, but in some cities it would be impossible for them to get around if they had to do this. My city has many small streets and intersections that are clogged with traffic most of the day and it becomes routine for trucks to push their way in and expect people to slow down to allow for their trailer. It's something that might be enforceable but never will be.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yeah I would say a car with full autonomy should never allow driving over the limit. If there are cars going faster than the limit, the autonomous car should be relegated to the slow lane. That's one gray area that humans can get away with that a computer can't.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That's perfectly fine. But it will probably be more expensive than on-demand or pre-scheduled transportation services once self-driving cars are a reality.
It's not yet clear how liability will be distributed. Clearly liability will be held by somebody. In my opinion the most likely scenario is that the operator of the vehicle will take liability for its operation and will purchase insurance commensurate with that liability. The operator is whoever is commanding the vehicle. If you own your own self-driving car and tell it to drive you from point A to point B, you are the operator. If you hire a self-driving Uber, you tell Uber to take you to point B and Uber tells the car to drive you to point B, Uber becomes the operator.
Self-driving car insurance will be cheaper if the safety is higher with self-driving features, which seems likely. The insurer would hold the manufacturer of the vehicle liable in cases of gross negligence, but not in the situation of ordinary crashes which are a statistical certainty and included in the insurer's calculations. Insurers don't require perfect safety, in fact perfect safety would put insurers out of business. They just calculate a risk, and bill enough to cover their risk plus overhead and profit margin.
If the laws change so that vehicle operators do not need to accept liability for a self-driving vehicle they are operating then the manufacturer would be liable and the insurance cost would be reflected in the purchase price of the car.
That's perfectly fine. But it will probably be more expensive than on-demand or pre-scheduled transportation services once self-driving cars are a reality.
Sure it will, but so is the bus now. And like I said in the other comment; if I wanted that kind of service I would take a bus which will still be cheaper of the three. I can't see automated services being much less expensive than a taxi however. The cars will cost 4x as expensive, and they will need to satisfy most of the same kind of maintenance standards and have a commercial form of automated insurance. Rally don't see how that will average out to being cheaper just by removing the driver.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Dude, every GM car has had a "black box" of sorts since ~1996. It keeps a rolling 6-second log of the brake and gas pedal positions, speed and yaw (in the Corvette at least) sensor readings, cruise control power/speed settings, and some others I don't remember right now. It stops recording when the air bag sensors fire and leaves the car with a recorded flight-log of the 6-seconds leading up to something bad enough to cause the bags to deploy. There was a lot of talk on car forums at the time about how this might be disabled, for the very reason that you bring up - a lot of folks didn't like the idea of their car potentially "testifying against them" if it came down to it. The only way to disable the system was to pull the fuse for the air bag system, which would disable the recorder, and the air bags as well - not really an option unless your tin foil hat has a LOT of padding........
Google.
It's a short list. AC is clueless.
That speed information comes via road map data. It's usually correct (say 95%+) but it can be wrong. I would certainly use it for a suggested guideline (like auto coloring the speedometer readout or posting a gentle audible alert).
Moron, the road was clear.
Even if velocity had been the car's decision (it wasn't), autonomous cars will go somewhat above the speed limit if surrounding traffic does. It's the right thing to do.
And of course the car logs its speed. I would expect it to. Having an autopilot feature that deliberately doesn't log data would expose Tesla to much greater liability.
Yes it is the right thing to do but it is still *illegal*. No officer is going to say publicly that you can drive 75 in a 65 because that would defeat the purpose of the speed limit being 65.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So why are you saying it, when it's completely irrelevant to this conversation?
I find relevant to the conversation to point out "things that joe 6 pack might accidentally call an 'autopilot' even if other terminology is prefered by people in the field".
It's relevant to a discussion thread where one of the theme is "Telsa's Autopilot is exactly what is also called an autopilot on airplanes and in boats and thus is reasonable name for this technology" vs. "The word 'autopilot' is a dangerous name because people are going to expect way too much from it".
And that's why I think "Ship's Commander mode" would be adapted. I would convey in layman's term what they though when saying "autopilot".
So, just to be clear: you think "ship's commander mode" would be a better name for something that behaves more like a ship's "autopilot", and not even vaguely or remotely like a "ship's commander" (which is a human) at all? I would love it if you could draw me a road map to that conclusion,
I'm VERY bad at marketing.
In this image the "ship's commander" human, is the human driver.
He doesn't directly work the wheel, he's giving orders. He's in command of the ship.
(But won't necessarily take care of the minute details).
And I find it a good word, because it convey's an active role to the human driver (be a commander !),
one which I hope is a lot less likely to end up saying "Hey, let's take a nap while the car drives itself around !".
Perhaps that would be best, because human stupidity is boundless. However, in order for it to be meaningful we'll also have to implement chip-and-pin (or similar) in our driver's licenses as a replacement for or supplement to ignition keys.
That's a bit extreme...
Currently in most European jurisdictions (where the Manual vs. Automatic transmission distinction is frequently seen), the selection is done at registration time.
To register a car, you need to be able to drive it and have the appropriate driver license.
(Note: I have no clue how this works when you're a rich person who never learned to drive, but want to own a car and hire a chauffeur. I haven't looked into it).
In theory car rental companies are required to check you driver license. But in practice, I doubt that checks go anywhere beyond "Yup, it exists" - I doubt that car rental rental companies go all the way to check if your driver license allows you to drive on the type of transmission featured on the car that you're renting.
So in practice you could have a "restricted" license (only car without advanced driving assistance), and rent a car or borrow one with some autopilot-like features and take out the portable DVD player.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]