Rossi on E-Cat Manufacturing Capability: ‘We Are Ready’

On the Journal of Nuclear Physics today, a reader asked Andrea Rossi how close he was to starting mass production of E-Cats once the requisite number of pre-orders had been obtained.

Drew Glista October 9, 2024 at 5:51 PM Dr. Rossi: Does Leonardo Corp. Have the manufacturing capabilities in place to immediately start producing E-cats when the one million unit order goal is achieved? Will manufacturing be an in-house production line or done using a contractor facilities. Can you provide the current manufacturing readiness level (MRL) for in-house or contractor capabilities. See this website for definition Of MRLs: https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/careerfields/manufacturing-readiness-levelmanufact Congrats on the test!

Rossi responded:

Andrea Rossi October 9, 2024 at 11:40 PM Drew Glista: We are ready, combining internal and outsourcing: in the MRL scale I’d say 9 Warm Regards, A.R.

I had not heard of this Manufacturing Readiness scale before, basically it’s a scale from 1-10 that categorizes readiness for manufacture, 1 being the lowest level of readiness.

Level 9 is described as “Low rate production demonstrated; Capability in place to begin . . . This level of readiness is normally associated with readiness for entry into Full-Rate Production (FRP). All systems engineering/design requirements should have been met such that there are minimal system changes.”

Rossi has stated that they have already produced hundreds of E-Cat NGU units using the manufacturing system in place. However full-scale mass production will require millions of orders to be able to produce the units at the listed price.

I think Rossi’s easiest path to mass production will come from big orders from large companies, and I think that the main reason the Latina demonstration was put on was to try to get the confidence from customers who have the ability to place such big orders. One sufficiently large order from a single customer is much easier than millions of retail orders. To get such a large order, Leonardo will have to satisfy the customer that they are indeed ready to start the manufacturing process quickly. I doubt anyone would place a solid order if manufacturing systems were not in place and production was years away.