On I-95, I put the car in the middle lane and it just..stays there for many many miles. Works flawlessly. (I have the free AP).
Yes, Autopilot does like the middle lane! On a 2-lane limited access highway, it's generally pretty good about getting out of the passing lane when someone is coming from behind. But generally my preference is to not be in the middle lane, especially in moderately busy traffic where cars may be passing on the right. But on a limited access highway, if the behavior I am looking for is for it to stay in a lane no matter what, I can just switch off NoA and it will stay where I want it.
Not so with FSD beta. If you engage autosteer at all on a divided highway (but not limited access), you are at the whims of what the car wants to do, and I've found that is is somewhat contrary to my preference. Yes,
@bradtem I agree that the right lane is fairly chaotic, but if anything, this illustrates how far away we are from true FSD. Either the car needs to "look" further and anticipate potential right lane exits and merges as well as looking farther behind to move out of the passing lane when a car is approaching from behind (before they decide to move into the right lane to pass you), or there does need to be an attempt to more closely mimic human behavior, which might be to actually accelerate to get by a potentially merging vehicle.
I'm generally pretty tolerant of Autopilot/FSD's behavior being different from my own, but I've seen way too many times it's habit of seeing a slow moving vehicle in a long merge lane, with plenty of room for my car to get by, but FSD doing a very aggressive braking maneuver to let the car merge in. A more acceptable behavior would be to just recognize the merging car has room to stay in the merge lane as we pass (or even accelerate slightly to get by them), or perform an expedited lane change if all clear is detected to the left. I'm also not opposed to hanging out in the left lane (I probably do that myself on divided highways with a lot of intersections), but on a highway with relatively few intersections and little traffic, there is no need to camp out in the left lane. I would want the car to realize this and stay in the right.