I am certainly not going to defend Tesla on their labeling of and messaging around AutoPilot and FSD. But for all the criticism, I see a lot of inconsistent and incorrect terminology used by the posters here trying to clear things up for the OP.
The best and most consistent description of the features, IMO, comes from Tesla's website and your manual (yes, RTFM please). Every car comes with AutoPilot, which comprises "Autosteer" and "Traffic Aware Cruise Control" (TACC), along with standard active safety features:
- Lane Assist
- Collision Avoidance Assist
- Speed Assist
TACC is just active cruise control and Autosteer is lane keeping with TACC engaged.
Adding the "Full Self-Driving Feature" (purchased or subscription) provides the following capabilities:
- Auto Lane Change - when Autosteer is engaged, use turn signal to tell the car to change lanes when clear
- Navigate on Autopilot - when Autosteer is engaged on a highway with a destination set in the Navigation system, will automatically change lanes to maintain speed, automatically make highway transitions, and exit off the highway based
- Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control - when TACC and/or Autosteer is engaged, will (attempt to) stop at stop signs and red lights. Will proceed through a green light if it has identified a "follow" car.
- Autopark - automatic parallel and vertical parking (be prepared for a lot of 3-point backing even when not required).
- Summon - move the car up to 30 feet into and out of tight parking space or garage.
- Smart Summon - claims to allow the car to pull out of a parking space and come to a selected spot, but rarely works.
- Autosteer on City Streets (coming soon).
It is the "Autosteer on City Streets" feature that is the feature currently being tested under the term "FSD Beta," and this involves full navigation of surface streets.
Yes, the term "FSD Beta" is completely horrible in that many of these other features are also still termed "Beta" even though they are in the production release of the car's firmware, and "FSD" is used by Tesla as both a shortcut for Autosteer on City Streets feature and the overarching term for a suite of features. But if all the "experts" in these forums (and this one in particular) could use the right terms on a consistent basis, it would certainly help matters a lot.