Why Rossi’s Fast Track Path to E-Cat Commercialization May Not be Impossible

Andrea Rossi has been talking in a very ambitious way lately. His plans to launch production with a million E-Cats later this year have taken even staunch LENR and E-Cat supporters by surprise. Designing, manufacturing, distributing and marketing a million units of anything is a huge undertaking — but when you are talking about a world-changing energy technology, it is difficult to see how you can accomplish this in just a few months. Rossi has said that he hopes to start production in the Autumn of this year — but if you read his remarks on the topic he is allowing for possible changes in schedule, and it would not be surprising if he moved back the projected launch time.

One of the big questions that arises is whether Leonardo Corporation has the funds to accomplish all of its goals. When asked about this recently, Rossi responded “be sure, we are a well fueled warship”. As far as funding goes, we don’t know anything about outside investment that has been made in Leonardo Corporation. My sense is that Rossi, who seems to want to keep in firm control of everything connected with the E-Cat is going to be very loathe to allow outside investors to have a significant stake in his company. Indeed, investors with deep pockets may put off by Rossi’s lowest-possible-cost strategy of marketing the E-Cat.

What Rossi does have going for him is his pre-order strategy. We don’t know how many people who have signed up — but Rossi said they met their goal of 10,000 a long while back. By this Autumn there may be very many more. If 100,000 pre-orders converted to actual orders, Rossi would have $100 million (assuming an E-Cat costs $1000) which could go a long way to funding startup production.

Another thing to remember is that Rossi has consistently mentioned that he is going to be outsourcing production as much as possible. The E-Cat itself is not a hugely complicated machine — basically a reactor core connected to metal plumbing, along with electronic controls. We know that National Instruments is supplying the electronics, and everything else (except for the proprietary fuel preparation) could be manufactured by any competent machine shop. Of course there would need to be assembly plants for the final building, testing and distribution.

Rossi has recently announced how he will build his installation and servicing team — use established contractors who are already working in the field who are willing to sign up to be agents for Leornardo Corp.

Marketing may not be a huge challenge either. A working E-Cat will market itself via word of mount and internet discussion — especially if the E-Cat is the only game in town. The low-cost strategy will help tremendously. When Rossi was advised by a JONP reader recently to put a decent markup on his products, he responded, “I prefer to keep prices as low as possible, also to make this tech at disposal of every pocket. A revolution must be popular, to survive.”

Rossi is not acting like a conventional businessman here. He realizes that he has a revolutionary product in his hands and is apparently planning to go about commercialization in a revolutionary way. While achieving his goals might seem improbable, they may not be impossible.