That said, I have a few friends who bought it's shares and their rationale is that it's a "clean energy play", far bigger than cars and that their brand is going to be as valuable as Apple. Only time will tell I guess, everyone can put their money where their mouth is and shorting Tesla has been a pretty bad proposition so far.

First Tesla is growing fast so that $50k will drastically go down in the coming years.

Tesla is more vertically integrated so you have to include the valuation of all the dealerships, parts of their suppliers, the charging network, ...

And third there are the “other” businesses like the battery storage, solar roofs, software revenue, ...

So overall the numbers of cars produced is probably too simplistic to compare them.

I don't agree that it's a problem. Why do you think that a silly valuation is a problem?