Who cares about approach? Consumers only care if the product works or not. They haven't made it work and don't look like they will make it work.
You don't get brownie points if you deliberately hamstring yourselves (no sensors, no maps) and make the problem harder than it already is. It's like trying to jump higher and higher to fly to moon instead of using rockets. It doesn't mean you're tackling a fundamentally harder problem.
Consumers don't care, but observers who are trying to understand the nature of what's being developed do. Tesla's approach is not strictly about cars, just like their entire company isn't strictly about cars. They're reaching for something bigger than self-driving with FSD, and if they weren't doing it the way they're doing it, those additional wins wouldn't be in scope.
You don't get brownie points if you deliberately hamstring yourselves (no sensors, no maps) and make the problem harder than it already is. It's like trying to jump higher and higher to fly to moon instead of using rockets. It doesn't mean you're tackling a fundamentally harder problem.