Visibility into Tesla’s future revenue is actually reasonably simple. It’s got one product and expects to sell 20,000 units this year and should bring in around 1.9 billion in revenue. By the end of the year Elon Musk has promised he’ll be at a 25 percent gross margin.

But what about 2014? Telsa is now trading at 30 times 2014 earnings estimates of $1.30 per share, a pretty generous valuation by most stretches of the imagination. There’s the unknown of how many Model S sedans Tesla can build in 2014. By all appearances demand is growing and will exceed the 20,000 annual unit rate the company is now working with.

And there had been the possibility of additional revenue from the release of the Model X but it now appears that it’ll be pushed further into 2014. It’s unlikely to help Tesla’s bottom line in 2014.

So what justifies Tesla’s valuation? I really am starting to believe it’s Elon Musk and his vision. The product is very good and customers are happy and there’s a little bit of an Apple like cult point of personality developing in the minds of Tesla’s fans. And if we get even a 5 or 10 percent improvement in range due to battery innovation over the next 5 years, the possibility of a mass market luxury EV at a reasonable price starts to look like a real competitive threat for BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus. With BMW valued at $46 billion, Tesla’s $4 billion valuation starts to look, dare I say, cheap.