Yeah I'm unclear if they were exaggerating, or just wrong. It seems unlikely you'd generate a plot showing an intentionally wrong trajectory/aphelion that could be shot down by later observation. I'm actually wondering if they just had insufficient or insufficiently accurate data initially on its position/velocity and as they got more observation time, corrected it.
>But astronomers online noticed some discrepancies with the numbers Musk tweeted, and SpaceX ultimately sent a revised orbit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Wednesday (You can find it by selecting “target body” -143205.) The new orbit shows that the car will indeed travel farther out than the orbit of Mars, but not far enough to make it to the asteroid belt. The belt begins about 329 million miles from the Sun, and the Tesla will reach a distance about 160 million miles away from the Solar System’s star.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...