my understanding is that significant share of [Big] car stealing business is for export to other countries (obviously not to the countries like Germany or UK :).
The vast, vast majority of cases of car theft are not theft to fence the car, but rather as an untraceable means to commit further, far more profitable crimes.
That happens for high end stuff. Common cars end up in chop shops and the parts are sold to collision and repair shops, frequently under the same roof.
just checked - there are large sources of "common car" used parts (used 2005 Honda Civic headlights for example at $30-80/each without delivery where is non-OEM new in US is $100-150/pair) in the large Far East Russian port of Vladivostok from which those parts sold and distributed across Russia. Naturally much of this is the used parts from dismantled cars from US and Japan, and there is no way to establish provenance that any given part came from a legally dismantled car.
Most modern "phone home" trackers utilize cell networks to send updates on their current location. I'm not sure if Tesla's are designed to operate on foreign networks, but once they are off the network, they can't phone home.
It's not uncommon in port cities for stolen cars to be on a ship less than an hour after their theft - not exaggerating.
Unless you notice your car missing and check it's location within this time-frame, you might not be getting it back.
my understanding is that significant share of [Big] car stealing business is for export to other countries (obviously not to the countries like Germany or UK :).