A surprisingly weak first quarter in 2019 left the company desperate for cash, but Tesla turned a profit in the third quarter as it cut costs and reported record deliveries. The quarterly report in late October kick-started a stock rally that has more than doubled the share price, to $566.90 on Tuesday. That has pushed Tesla’s valuation above $100 billion, eclipsing that of Volkswagen — and more than General Motors and Ford combined.

The rally got added fuel this month from Tesla’s report that it delivered 367,500 vehicles in 2019. Volkswagen delivered 30 times as many, but bulls argue that Tesla’s figure reflected healthy demand because it fell within the range of 360,000 to 400,000 that the company had forecast early last year.

“I think at the end of the day, what’s going to make the company is demand,” said Bill Selesky, an analyst with Argus Research who rated the automaker as a “buy” earlier this month. “Any time a consumer thinks about an electric vehicle, they don’t think about an electric vehicle made by Ford or G.M. or BMW. The name that always pops into their mind immediately is Tesla, so it has instant name recognition.”

In Tesla, Mr. Selesky sees a company that has reined in operating costs and research-and-development costs and brought a Shanghai factory online faster than expected. As a result, he expects the company will continue to improve performance and benefit from economies of scale.

Tesla’s recent performance has given confidence to analysts like Mr. Selesky, whose longer-term target price for the stock is $556. Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer is among the more optimistic Tesla analysts, having raised his 12-to-18-month target stock price this month to $612.

The new factory in China positions Tesla to take advantage of strong demand there, putting a goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles this year “well within reach,” Mr. Ives of Wedbush said in a note last week. At its current trajectory, the company has the potential to deliver a million vehicles sooner than expected, potentially driving its stock price as high as $900 in the coming years, depending on how Tesla fares in China, Mr. Ives said.

Other companies may be building out their electric vehicle operations, but Tesla, which produces cars domestically in Fremont, Calif., has the “most impressive product road map” of any automaker or technology company, Mr. Ives said. And the biggest mistake that Tesla’s pessimists make is “underestimating the moat that Musk and Fremont have built.”