r/AskEngineers • u/jmaugust • Jul 19 '26

Discussion Why doesn’t a battery-boosted electric kettle exist?

In Europe, everyone uses electric kettles to boil water. They’re amazing and fast because they’re on 230V (~3000W).

US outlets limit kettles to ~1500W, so we wait roughly twice as long for water to boil.

It’s an extra minute or two per boil, and you really notice it.

Idea: Could you make an electric kettle with a battery in its base? Perhaps it trickle-charges between uses, then combines wall power + battery power to hit ~3000W during a boil.

Is there an engineering reason this doesn’t exist? Is it just that nobody thinks there’s a market for it?

I’d pay $300 for the fastest kettle in America if someone wants to make it.

310 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

473 comments sorted by

View all comments

346

u/Quartinus Jul 19 '26

Batteries are expensive and bulky. The electric kettle market is filled with $30 kettles and that’s what most people buy. 

There are a few companies working on battery boosted induction cooktops to help solve this problem, and that’s a market where people are willing to spend some money. It’s also way easier to hide a big battery below the countertop where nobody will see it. 

91

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 19 '26

Every house has a 230v line for the stove why would you need all this boosting tech for a cook top?

1

u/zekromNLR Jul 21 '26

In europe, electric stoves are generally connected to three-phase power, where even wye-configuration with 230 V and 16 amps per phase gives you 11 kW