Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a typical aircraft autopilot, the pilot is allowed to take their hands off the controls. Tesla's manual quite clearly forbids that.
> Tesla's manual quite clearly forbids that. Now. It used to only require you to touch the steering wheel for 1 second every 15 minutes. Until regulators clamped down on that as grossly inadequate.
I read it a few years ago and again a few months ago; from what I recall in both cases the manual insisted that drivers keep their hands on the wheels. But this is at odds with how their cars are promoted and evidently programmed. It seems to me that Tesla has been coyly but deliberately encouraging and facilitating a usage pattern which, for legal/liability reasons, they forbid in the manual.