Rossi Provides Rationale for Waiting for 1 million Ecat Preorders

The following comment from Andrea Rossi today was in response to questions posed on the Journal of Nuclear Physics as to why Leonardo Corporation cannot begin to deliver the Ecat SKLeps prior to achieving the stated goal of 1 million pre-orders.

Andrea Rossi

Andreas and Enzo Amato

This answer is to both of you, due to the fact that substantially you put the same questions.
My answer is combined by the following issues:
1- We hoave precise contracts on course that bind us to reach a precise economy scale, obviously, as I said, keeping the numbers with good sense
2- We reached pre-orders for about 800000 units, most of them made by big buyers
3- Obviously, before starting to manufacture even “only” 800000 units we need to have the guarantee to be paid
4- We do not have problems with the crowd of small buyers, that surely have the money to pay, sauf some exception that would not have relevant
consequences
5- Unfortunately, many big buyers are not able to give us evidence to dispose of the financial grounds necessary to guarantee us to be able to pay
6- As a consequence of this fact, we do not have so far enough pre-ordered units to sustain the manufacturing and the distribution
7- We cannot deliver small quantities for the following reasons:
8- We have an army of enemies- that surely are among the Clients that ordered one or few units- that will attempt to disparage the product
9- The point 8 can be resolved only if a mass of satisfied Clients obliterates the foes
10- Many other Clients will use the few units bought to make the reverse engineering
11- The points 8 and 10 would have catastrophic consequences for our investors
12- To confront successfully the points 1 through 11 it is important to dispose of a strong financial power of fire, otherwise our Team and our technology will be annihilated within weeks, if not days, after a superficial and naif distribution.
I empathyze your feelings, but also I hope you can understand that this situation is strategically very complex. This does not mean we will not be able to resolve it: we are working very hard.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

 

I know that a lot of people disagree with this strategy, but it doesn’t seem like Rossi is going to change his strategy. I think he his mostly concerned about point 10, the reverse engineering aspect. I think he believes that it won’t take long for people to figure out what is going on with the SKLep, and if that is the case after having released just a few thousand units, he could well be “annhilated” very quickly by competitors. If it turns out that the Ecat Sklep is relatively easy to replicate, then I am sure that there will be an immediate appearance of an army of replicators given the precarious world situation regarding energy security.

In today’s post he explains the need to avoid catastrophic consequences for his investors, about whom we know nothing. They may have more influence over Rossi’s business plan than we realize.