Useless seems like a strong word. I tried it out for a trip and I think I only had to intervene once when it phantom slowed down on the freeway. I've had other cars whose lane keep required a lot more intervention.
The Tesla changed lanes to faster lanes, could navigate itself off the freeway, and it wasn't until I got into back roads without lines and stuff before it got a bit iffy. But even then it did a decent job navigating.
I'm not aware of any other systems that can do that.
The point of the author seems that autopilot is better than FSD for him:
Without FSD, you pay attention to the road and everything else is within your control. With FSD, you still need to pay attention but now there’s the additional cognitive load to monitor an unpredictable system over which you don’t have direct control. Forget about just being focused, you need to be hyper-focused, and you need to pay $99 per month or a one time fee of $12,000 for the privilege. With the limited functionality of autopilot, you hit the sweet spot: adaptive cruise control and lane centering work reliably, and you don’t need to worry about any other mischief.
The main reason I bought FSD was because AP disengages every time you change lanes. Need to pass someone: Turn into left lane, reengage AP, pass car(s), turn back to right lane, re-engage AP. It was super frustrating.
