One thing is certain: Most people who own cars manufactured by Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) love them. Most polls show a satisfaction rate of better than 90%. If you’ve ever driven a Tesla, then you know the cars are really cool in so many wonderful ways.

But Tesla stock, trading at a roughly $32 billion market cap, is just about the dumbest investment one could ever make.

As cool as the cars are, they’ll never reach a point where both a.) enough consumers buy them to make Tesla profitable, and b.) TSLA is somehow actually worth $32 billion.

The Numbers Don’t Make Sense

Let’s start with pricing. Right now, the Model S runs $68,000 at a minimum. The Model X comes in at $85,500 (it was $74,000 for the Model X 60D … for a few months). The only people who buy those are rich people, and there aren’t enough of them in the world to make Tesla profitable.

But what about the Model 3, which TSLA claims will only cost $35,000?

Here’s the thing. Over 200,000 people have slapped down a $1,000 deposit for a car that doesn’t even exist yet. Popular Mechanics says they won’t even be delivered until 2018.

Hey, 400,000 is a lot of cars! Yes, and the rest of the auto manufacturers sell about 450,000 sedans per month. But hey, at least TSLA stock will enjoy $14 billion in revenue!

Of course, TSLA stock enjoyed $5.9 billion in revenue in the trailing 12 months, and you know what? It resulted in a net loss of $875 million and a burn of almost $800 million of cash. Does that mean these losses will magically turn around by doubling the revenue? Not necessarily.

Here’s another reason Tesla stock is stupidly overpriced, and you are being snookered if you buy it.

You think the Model 3 is somehow the answer for electric cars? It allegedly will get “up to 300 miles” per charge. But the expected number right now is 215. And what happens if you live in a cold part of the country? What if you actually use things like headlights, the radio and the 17-inch viewscreen? Worse, what if you actually live in an area that isn’t flat? That 300 miles won’t actually be 300 miles.

What happens if you leave a battery sitting around and forget to charge it overnight? That’s assuming you can find places to charge it at all. I live in Southern California, where everyone is supposedly green-conscious … and yet it’s still awfully difficult to find a Tesla charging station.

Then there’s charge time, which takes anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. Hope you have a nice café somewhere you can waste your time in.

But wait, there’s more.

A Bad Deal Bought With Tesla Stock

Tesla made a complete buyout of SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) for $2.6 billion, which lost $768 million in 2015 — more than double FY14’s loss which, was more than double FY13’s loss!

This acquisition was a joke and reeked of crony capitalism. Not to mention that Tesla stock was used to actually finance the acquisition. Back in June, the offer was 0.122 to 0.131 shares offered for every SCTY share. As MarketWatch’s Philip van Doorn points out:

“The lower end of this range would be 11,992,163 newly issued Tesla shares, which would dilute Tesla’s common shares by another 9.0% from the April 29 share count, for a total dilution, including the May stock offering, of 13.9%. That is epic dilution.”

For anyone still reading, who thinks that electric cars are somehow “green” and “clean,” you need to do some research. It takes an enormous amount of fossil-fuel energy to mine for the elements necessary to create the batteries. Eventually, those batteries will also have to be disposed of.

Yes, Teslas are “greener,” but you’re far from unstained.

Bottom Line

So can you do anything at all with TSLA stock?

I wouldn’t own it. But it does have lots of volatility, which means Tesla is good for nimble traders who want to examine the charts and look for entry and exit points.

You’re a lot more likely to make money aggressively and speculatively trading Tesla stock than you are holding it for the long run.

Lawrence Meyers is the CEO of PDL Capital, and manager of the forthcoming Liberty Portfolio stock newsletter. He has 22 years’ experience in the stock market, and has written more than 1,600 articles on investing. Lawrence Meyers can be reached at TheLibertyPortfolio@gmail.com. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The starting price of the Model X is $85,500. The story previously listed $74,000 — the price of the now discontinued Model X 60D. Also, the number of Tesla pre-orders was incorrectly listed as 200,000. It has been corrected to 400,000. We apologize for the errors.