At The Motley Fool, we poke plenty of fun at Wall Street analysts and their endless cycle of upgrades, downgrades, and "initiating coverage at neutral." So you might think we'd be the last people to give virtual ink to such "news." And we would be -- if that were all we were doing.

But in "This Just In," we don't simply tell you what the analysts said. We'll also show you whether they know what they're talking about. To help, we've enlisted Motley Fool CAPS, our tool for rating stocks and analysts alike. With CAPS, we track the long-term performance of Wall Street's best and brightest -- and its worst and sorriest, too.

And speaking of the best ...
Last month we took a look at electric car battery-maker A123 Systems (Nasdaq: AONE), and the outta-the-blue recommendation to buy it by little-known analyst "Craig-Hallum." In discussing the initiation of coverage, I raised several points in A123's favor (aside from its coincidental placing one page 1 of the phone book): 

  • For one thing, there was the long-as-my-arm list of industry heavyweights backing A123 -- everyone from energy stalwarts General Electric (NYSE: GE) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), to the sorta logical support of cell phone IP provider Qualcomm.
  • For another, there was A123's just-as-sizeable rolodex of customers. The company had recently inked a deal to supply lithium-ion battery systems to Navistar (NYSE: NAV) for use in electric delivery vehicles that are increasingly filling the motor pools at FedEx and UPS (NYSE: UPS).

And now ... investors have one more reason to love A123: An upgrade from the stockpicking superstars at Barclays Capital. 

Happy, happy, joy, joy!
 Ranked as one of the literal "best" analysts on Wall Street according to our stats on CAPS, you'd expect investors to applaud an upgrade from Barclays -- and you'd be right. In fact, investors may have gone a bit over the edge on this one, bidding A123 shares up as much as 15% yesterday. 

Seems a bit much considering if the only thing that's actually changed about the company is ... one person's opinion. But is that really all there is to this story? Well, let's review Barclays' arguments. 

According to the analyst, one key reason to buy A123 today is the self-same Navistar contract that Craig-Hallum highlighted last month. A second reason would be the very simple observation that A123's shares are "down 60% year to date." Third, Barclays notes that A123 customer Fisker Automotive is on track to produce a run of 100 to 200 consumer vehicles in December, and potentially ramp that production up to 1000 units per month early next year. 

Fisker who?
 But are even these facts enough to justify investing in A123 today? I mean, first off, raise your hand if you've even ever heard of "Fisker Automotive." 

OK, I see a few hands there. But among those of you who've actually heard of Fisker, how many think the company's got a better shot than, say, recent IPO Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA), at making it big in electric vehicles? 

Uh huh. Thought so. So whatever you think about Tesla's viability in its own right, the company's clearly much farther along the road to viability than tiny Fisker. And betting on Fisker to make A123 into a success seems an awfully thin reed on which to support a buy thesis. 

What's more, expecting that whatever business Fisker can throw A123's way -- even in conjunction with a few hundred orders from Navistar -- will suffice to reverse the $116 million (and growing) annual cash burn at A123 seems a pretty forlorn hope. Seems to me, any rechargeable battery company that hopes to make it big in this here Electric Car Revolution is going to need to achieve massive scale of operations to succeed. 

Gentlemen ... I see you've already started your engines
 And it's here that I fear A123 lost the race before it even began. Consider: We already know from whom Tesla is getting its batteries (Panasonic). We know that Nissan is developing batteries in-house, with help from NEC. And we know both General Motors and Ford (NYSE: F) have elected to go with yet another foreign supplier to service their rechargeable battery needs. (In each case, Detroit chose LG Chem as its supplier of choice.) 

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to me like all the really big entrants into the electric car race have already been spoken for -- and that after the choices were made, A123 remains the odd man out. Seems to me, snapping batteries into place on a few electric buggies from Fisker, and a coupla Navistar's delivery vans, won't be enough to make A123 "a contender."

It may take some time for the investors, caught up in the enthusiasm of yesterday's upgrade, to come to the same conclusion. But once they do, I expect the slow drain that's characterized this stock's performance all year long will resume.