It’s not even just a good fit, it’s specifically called out in 18 USC § 7 (6):
Special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States defined
(6) Any vehicle used or designed for flight or navigation in space and on the registry of the United States pursuant to the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies and the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space, while that vehicle is in flight, which is from the moment when all external doors are closed on Earth following embarkation until the moment when one such door is opened on Earth for disembarkation or in the case of a forced landing, until the competent authorities take over the responsibility for the vehicle and for persons and property aboard.
(7) Any place outside the jurisdiction of any nation with respect to an offense by or against a national of the United States.
The idea that you need to create a luxurious “car guys” version of an electrical car to be successful with the concept wasn’t even new when Musk acted on it. It is stated verbatim by the protagonist in
the 1986 Movie Killing Cars / Blitz https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089416/?ref_=tt_mv_close
If you read Thiels book from “Zero to One” he also describes what the real icebreaker was. The Toyota Prius. They found that a surprising amount of high income people choose to drive that middle class car because it was a step in the right direction. From the technical side what helped immensely to make the all electric car more practical came from a different direction as well. The ever more power hungry smartphones created a lot of demand for better battery technologie and the field made huge advances.
Also I’m personally not very happy with electric cars as a solution to anything. It only shifts the responsibilities. If the source of electricity for the car still comes from coal and oil plants it does nothing for the environment. Worse yet, you pile on to the negative as the production and later disposal of the cars is a big strain.
Going back to Thiel, he muses that Musks marketing based way to tackle ecological problems is the only one that works, targeting the individual (surprise!) and if you look at Musks other projects like the hyperloop it is always about disrupting the real (public) solutions instead.
Electric cars will be mandatory on Mars because insufficient atmospheric O2 for internal or external combustion engines, or for non-mutant mules or oxen. Teslas are merely prototypes for Mars buggies. The trick will be finding Martian lithium for batteries.
