I saw the video animation of the Tesla separating from the second stage. At that point, the car no longer has thrust, so I'm assuming they've calculated the thrust to be just enough to reach Mars and to be able to fall into orbit. To quote the movie Apollo 13, "we've just put Isaac Newton in the driver's seat". I dearly hope that Musk and team have been referring to the "dummy" in the driver's seat of the Tesla as Is…
They aren't aiming for Mars orbit. As far as I can tell, they aren't even aiming to come close to Mars. Instead (as far as I can tell) they are aiming to come close to the orbit of Mars, i.e. where Mars will be in 4 or 5 months.
Wait, wait wait. If they aren't putting the Tesla into actual orbit, then what about--50 years from now--when they run into a situation on Mars Base Alpha where the only possible solution to an imminent cascading system failure is to dock with the orbiting Roadster and harvest a crucial part from the drivetrain in order to repair their reactor and save the base?!