If an e-cat is really nothing but a boiler with a steel core, some electronics
(wouldn't be multi-purpose but possibly on a single ASIC), a heater element and
connectors for some kind of heat exchanger, I'd expect a small home unit to
cost about $ 400 to produce and ship from China. This is about what simple
1-cylinder 4-stroke engines cost. I don't know about nickel in the purities
allegedly required and whatever else Rossi claims to use as a catalyst and all
that - but looking at how primitive the equipment in Rossi's demo setups seems
to be, it would probably be even cheaper. Lets say $300 per. If he plans to
sell a million of them and a unit is rated at 10 kW and he sells them for
$50/kW, he'd turn over $500 million at $300 million cost. That leaves $200
million gross margin to cover development, testing, certification for a bunch
of markets, marketing, sales, administration (most of all that up front),
capital cost etc. and of course profit to do
all the good things Rossi promised when he set out. I have a hard time to
believe that an e-cat works at all (in fact I don't) but even IF it works - it
will surely be significantly more expensive than $50/kW for any size. And as
long as there is no competition, he'd be crazy to sell them so low anyway.
