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Why Does A Good Kettle Cost $90+?

176 points by boyter 13y ago

aychedee 13y ago
Retail margins are frequently 50%. (50% margin, 100% markup) Unless a company is vertically integrated. Does the author really not understand that? Markup/margin varies by product and retailer but is still one of the largest factors in the price you pay at retail.
- chewxy 13y ago
  Yeah, I figured so myself.
kevinchen 13y ago
> Unless of course, those $39 kettles use a digital solution to stop the water from boiling. Right, micros and temperature sensors are really expensive these days, especially at mass-production volumes. > But that is just rather silly, given that an analogue solution works better. tab closed
- wffurr 13y ago
  I guess you didn't get to the part where the author talks about PID controller tuning, temperature probes, and heat-proofing electronics. Do you have any reasons those statements bothered you or are you just a pro-digital kind of guy?
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    Yes, $30 is an insane estimate for the cost of a PID controller. Probably because nobody buys discrete PID hardware anymore because microcontrollers disrupted that market decades ago. You could easily implement thousands of PID controllers sufficient for this application on a $3 microcontroller with a $2 thermistor. Those are sparkfun prices, so 1/2 that would not be unreasonable for a BOM estimate. Sundry connectors and power transistors would cost more, but those will be present in the analog version as well. Temperature proofing is unnecessary - the sparkfun thermistor is rated to 125C and you can trade latency for max temp by moving it away from the heated parts. In this application you can afford to trade truckloads of latency. Also, this is not a project for 3EEs + 2 technicians, this is a project for 1 bored EE in an afternoon. I suspect calibrating the digital version would be 10x-100x easier on an industrial scale. I have no idea why or how he thinks the analog version would work better, so I can't really counter-argue.
    - Brashman 13y ago
      The PID controller was definitely the part that stuck out to me. To me, a PID controller is a method of designing a controller and thus essentially "free" to implement in software. Do you happen to know where this $30 number comes from? Also, I highly doubt that there's much variation in the "PID quality". This isn't a use case that should require especially careful controller design/tuning; it's not like your water temperature is going to see large sudden fluctuations. On a separate note, the price jumps from $16 to $45 going from the analog to digital version, though as far as I can see the only digital-specific additions are the EEs ($7) and PID controller ($10).
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
        On DigiKey I can find a bunch of PID controllers in the >$200 range. I suspect that the $30 figure comes from a discrete package that made economic sense long ago when one had to use op amps and tuning pots to build a PID circuit. Even though microcontrollers have disrupted that market, the ancient PID controllers will stick around in supply warehouses as long as the machines which used them need replacement parts. $30 (or $200) could be significantly above the original manufacturer price if the parts are no longer manufactured but are still in demand. If one has only ever heard of PID controllers as "the semi-magical black boxes used to solve control problems" then one might make the mistake of only looking through the purpose-built controllers rather than looking for the cheapest uC. As for your separate note, I noticed that inconsistency as well. I never figured it out, although by that point I was ~70% sure the whole analysis was botched so I didn't spend too much time thinking about it.
mesozoic 13y ago
A very long article that seems to not derive the simple answer of wholesale and retailer margins.
- Semiapies 13y ago
  And that does the usual geek thing of dismissing the idea that people do in fact pay for design differences.
GuiA 13y ago
I like the comment on the post: > "The kettle had caused the trip. It was no longer safe to use the kettle" > You know enough to start designing a temp. controlled kettle, and yet you overlooked the simple (and most likely) possibility that the kettle was on the same circuit with another high draw appliance (hair dryer, electric heater, etc.) and the combination of the two resulted in the trip from overload. And that there was nothing in fact wrong with the kettle at all. We sometimes forget that our hacker minds can be a weakness :)
- gregory144 13y ago
  It's possible he did consider that fact and the kettle wasn't on the same circuit with another high draw appliance.
  - joshschreuder 13y ago
    The author responded: "Everyone else in the house was asleep. But yes, you’re right, I have overlooked that possibility"
- ars 13y ago
  Not to mention if your kettle caused your main breaker to trip you have some serious problems in your wiring, not your kettle. A kettle might cause a branch circuit to trip - but the whole house??? If that happens you have bigger problems than a kettle. (Plus in the UK plugs have built in fuses should trip first. So it's pretty doubtful it was the kettle.)
  - kabouseng 13y ago
    An over current situation would trip the branch. A grounding issue would trip the main switch. If water came into the electric circuit causing a grounding of the current, then the main switch would trip. Nothing wrong with the house wiring.
    - ars 13y ago
      > A grounding issue would trip the main switch. If water came into the electric circuit causing a grounding of the current, then the main switch would trip. No it wouldn't. You could stick the bare wires of a branch circuit in water and it wouldn't trip the main breaker. The main breaker will trip if there is a short inside the panel (which is all but impossible unless you are working on it live - which is sometimes done). Or if you used so much electricity you simply overloaded it, but if you did that you have the wrong panel for your house (or you are running some crazy equipment - arc furnace, maybe).
arkitaip 13y ago
Glad I'm not the only one who frequently over thinks purchasing decisions :)
tim333 13y ago
I don't think a good kettle has to cost $90 - There's one one amazon with 80% 5 star reviews for $20. http://www.amazon.com/Courant-Cordless-Electric-Coffee-Makers/dp/B00BU6IHTE http://www.amazon.com/Courant-Cordless-Electric-Coffee-Maker... . Still there are lots of wealthy people with $100 + to spend so manufacturers will naturally make stuff for those price points if customers will buy it.
- chewxy 13y ago
  Which is my point. A basic kettle should not cost much. The $100 kettles are those with temperature controls.
- brc 13y ago
  I had an expensive kettle which was a gift. It lasted ten years but then started to leak and finally started tripping the breaker. I replaced it with a $20 plastic kettle which does everything the other one did, except boil faster and quieter. Just doesn't look as cool though. In reality, expensive kettles are like expensive clothes. They are probably made out of better materials, but the rest is just markup to cover the lower volumes and higher marketing costs. And because people will pay it for a brand name and sleek design.
- dima55 13y ago
  Please read the article. He's talking about temperature-controlled kettles. Yours only shuts off when boiling.
phaus 13y ago
>I don’t know how Hamilton Beach did it, and I’m exceedingly curious as to how. The people at Steepster don’t think too highly of it though, so there’s some clues there. In regards to the $45 variable temperature kettle. The folks at steepster probably didn't care for it because the temperature range is pretty narrow. For high-quality tea, 175-212F simply isn't a wide enough range. It's also not very precise. Many delicate green teas are best prepared at temperatures as low as 140F and in some cases just a few degrees can make a difference.
tostitos1979 13y ago
I've wanted a Zojirushi for a few months now. Heard really good things but also heard about the build up of scaling after some usage(I guess that depends on the type of water you use). I only drink black tea (using teabags - nothing fancy) so spending north of $100 seems overkill.
- chewxy 13y ago
  I grew up with one. Having instantly accessible hot water was amazing. Then I moved out and had to use a kettle
- RogerL 13y ago
  We just boil a bit of vinegar in ours every few weeks. Keeps it shiny and clean.
- dylanz 13y ago
  I've been meaning to buy a kettle, and this post made finally pull the trigger. I absolutely love my Zojirushi rice cooker, I have a Zojirushi thermos for my coffee which is perfect, and now I'm going to have a Zojirushi CV-DYC40 kettle. These (along with my Vitamix) are the only appliances I constantly take with me when I move.
- stock_toaster 13y ago
  Me too. The liner being "non-stick" is a bit concerning, but it seems like glass or uncoated metals are impossible to find. I imagine it has to do with scaling, discoloration, and/or lifetime. I have stayed with my old stovetop kettle until now, simply because it has no plastic/silicone/rubber in contact with the water.
- markrages 13y ago
  I've had a Zojirushi insulated pot for about ten years. I've got pretty hard water, but the scale just seems to build up and flake off in big chunks. The pot still works fine. The gasket hardened and cracked, but Zojirushi USA sells parts online. It was about $10 for a new one.
- muhfuhkuh 13y ago
tptacek 13y ago
Bear in mind that the price of insurance and UL certification is also built into these devices. Heat, huge amounts of electricity, water, hands: lots of liability. Is PID control all that expensive? Aren't you talking about a microcontroller, a thermocouple, and a relay?
- chewxy 13y ago
  I've been given different prices on that. Some people say it's just $0.50, some claim it's more than $10 to buy PIDs in bulk.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I've never done a PID from scratch, but a friend of mine did for a home espresso setup. I'm suggesting, instead of pricing a PID part, you price the components of a PID. I think the SS relay might be the most expensive part there.
    - chewxy 13y ago
      You have a point. Costing the components of a PID might actually be better. That said, a PID controller for my espresso machine cost about $200, but that was everything packaged in nicely.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        That's an insane price.
        sk5t 13y ago
        The espresso machine kits traditionally use industrial PID controllers from Fuji and the like, which (did and still do) cost about $200. It looks like there are lots of nice $35 options now... neat.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        A mechanical spring thermometer that goes from 0 to 120 degrees C costs ~£3. Add a microswitch and a relay and you should be fine. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Budget-Surface-Pipe-Thermometer-/370988569892?nma=true&si=M5EdqCeNKH%252BlwMGT0tsvpjbGigQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Budget-Surface-Pipe-Thermometer-/3...
BgSpnnrs 13y ago
Bought a kettle today, £12. I guess in the UK they are counted as a necessity and are cheap :P
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  I bought one recently in the UK - cheapest plastic ones were too flimsy (last couple of kettles died from broken plastic parts [eg in over-complicated lid catches]). Metal ones at the next level up didn't have a level indicator to see how full it is without opening the lid. Next level up from that was about £25-30. IIRC we paid ~£25 after discount. The best value, of those I found, excluding aesthetics was ~£22 .
- boyter 13y ago
  They are cheap in Australia as well since so many people drink tea. I had a $10 one which lasted for years.
joosters 13y ago
Your electric kettle almost certainly uses a thermostat patented by John Taylor [1], who made his fortune with the things. Effectively, your kettle helped pay for the wonderful Corpus Clock [2] - 'the strangest clock in the world' :) [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(inventor) [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock
- chewxy 13y ago
  If so, such an elegant solution. So elegant.
  - joosters 13y ago
    Yes. In a world of dodgy software patents, it's pleasing to see good 'real' patents.
- jdlshore 13y ago
  That clock is wonderful. Thanks for sharing it.
semerda 13y ago
Maybe someone could shed some light why this simple stainless steel kettle is worth $179.95? Is it the Small Bird Shaped Whistle ;-) lol http://www.amazon.com/Alessi-Michael-Graves-Kettle-Whistle/dp/B00004Y6FT http://www.amazon.com/Alessi-Michael-Graves-Kettle-Whistle/d...
- lingben 13y ago
  you're paying for the alessi name and design (Italian)
  - erdle2 13y ago
    The design is American, the manufacturer is Italian. And I believe the design for that kettle in particular was done in New Jersey.
lingben 13y ago
For me the perfect kettle is a simple glass kettle because I've found that it doesn't change the taste of water whereas metal or plastic kettles do. Also, I don't like the idea of heated plastic compounds leaching into my water. Bonus, it looks cool to see the water start to form bubbles and then to go into a full on boil!
- Angostura 13y ago
  I challenge you to a blind trial. I very much suspect that using an electric kettle and a glass kettle you would not be able to taste the difference of the water once cooled. (We'll run the electric kettle twice with clean water followed by a flush, as most manuals state.
  - lingben 13y ago
    you're probably right, it may be all in my mind :)
- rplnt 13y ago
  > Also, I don't like the idea of heated plastic compounds leaching into my water. I don't like the idea to getting burned on my kettle. So if anyone is looking for a kettle that should be metal, invest in one with double walls if you want it for the "look" or one that has palstic outside if you want it for the "taste". Having cheap metal kettle is much worse than having even cheaper plastic one in my opinion.
kintamanimatt 13y ago
The quick answer is supply chain markup. Stuff isn't sold at cost because that's usually not a winning, sustainable strategy. Distributors (if there are any), manufacturers, and retailers will all want to cover their (varying) overheads as well as make a profit. The largest profit is generally made by the the retailer. A bricks and mortar store has markups of about 100%. All the above is why you sometimes hear people talking about shorting their supply chains because it means lower trade prices, which in turn allows for increased profits, an increased ability to compete on price, or both.
mbrutsch 13y ago
> Using a bimetallic strip to trigger a mechanical trigger is simply quite a brilliantly elegant way of solving a problem. For over 200 years, no less: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallic_strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallic_strip . It's cute how he seems to think this is a novel solution.
vacri 13y ago
the price over a mass amount of units (say 100,000 units) This almost made me laugh out loud. Exactly how many kettles does the author think sells each year? Multiply by models and again by manufacturers, and you're talking millions of kettles. Even if you consider that one model will last multiple years, manufacturers don't buy supply batches that last for years. Some industries go in the extreme other direction - the local car industry got its stock-on-shelf lifetime down to 48 minutes from part arriving to part being screwed into car. Similarly, retail markup is generally 20-50% of the final cost. If you think this is too high (it really isn't) then I suggest you use your new formula to undercut the existing market and disrupt away. Other significant costs are transport and wholesalers (who aren't always the manufacturers). Kettles are bulky items that consume a lot of space in storage and transport. On top of all this, every party involved in the transaction is entitled to make some profit, and not just work for costs. There's also regulatory compliance, things like the CE mark. Looking at an item and stating that the price shouldn't be more than parts + amortised kickback to the designers is naievity, plain and simple.
- chewxy 13y ago
  I thought that markup was implicitly accepted in blog. I of course do not think that the price should be just the cost of the parts. In fact, I did mention that the fact that both $10 kettles and $39 kettles exist implies that there is some form of price discrimination. The difference in price is the additional markup that the manufacturer can get away with. As I mentioned, my marginal utility does not increase with the markup - a $39 kettle gives me the same utility as a $10 kettle. As for 100,000 units, yeah, that was probably a mistake. Australia only has 22 million people. No idea why I arbitrarily picked 100,000.
  - vacri 13y ago
    Yeah, I read through in more detail and saw that lurking towards the end. Just came back to edit, perhaps delete the comment but it's already replied-to. :) The costings at the end are off. Testing is much less that $5/unit for these kind of things, for example. Usually you'll have a common testbench across all products - it'll be much lower per unit, and not tied to a particular model. Also, retailers aren't the only ones in the pricing process - as I say above, wholesalers/distributors and transport also get figured into the cost. It all adds up. Marketing costs are mostly borne by the retailer portion of the price, as the wholesale channel marketing is much more limited and cost-effective (no tv or radio spots, print one catalogue and you're fine for a quarter/year, run a more niche website only for retailers, etc) The Australia-limited market thing is less of an issue - a kettle will have a market wider than this. But kettles generally last a long time, and there are hundreds of models out there. Though to honest, after a friend's horror story of one day finding a cockroach in her kettle that had been boiled white, I'm much keener on glass kettles now...
shurcooL 13y ago
And a 4K TV costs under $500.
Aloha 13y ago
why not just use a stovetop kettle? Obviously, not all places have stoves - but every place I've wanted to make hot water in has - or a microwave/
- pangram 13y ago
  Convenience, mostly -- with an electric kettle you can just hit a button and when it pops back it's ready. Also, if you happen to get involved with something and forget about the kettle, it's not a big deal; not so with the stove.
  - Aloha 13y ago
    my stovetop kettle whistles loudly when at boiling.
    - CCs 13y ago
      But when it runs out of water (or you forget to fill it up), it just burns...
- cecilpl 13y ago
  A regular kettle is far more efficient.
  - Aloha 13y ago
    Cite?
BertrandP 13y ago
tl;dr anyone?
stefan_kendall 13y ago
Why does an "X" cost "$Y+"? Because that's the price the market will bear for X. Cost has nothing to do with it. If I could sell you a kettle for $100,000 that cost me $100 to build, I would absolutely do it.
- thatthatis 13y ago
  He implicitly assumes (and I think correctly so) an efficient competitive market with zero economic profits.
Paul_S 13y ago
I like to think that often the main difference between cheap and expensive is the amount of QA done so I don't have to do the testing for the manufacturer. Though that's probably very naive on my part.
shalmanese 13y ago
People here are forgetting that you can buy a fully functioning tablet on a retail shelf for less than the cost of a temperature controlled kettle. You can buy a tablet AND a conventional kettle for less than the cost of the temperature controlled kettle. Tablet makers have to deal with QC and retail markup and all of the other things mentioned in this thread as possible drivers of the price so I don't find many of the explanations convincing. In reality, it's likely that either a) these things are being sold at massive profit margins or b) they're being produced very inefficiently with lots of waste in the production process.
- lewispollard 13y ago
  I think a lot of cheap tablets are loss leaders, and the manufacturers don't make any profit (or even lose money) and hope to make more money by bringing them into their retail stores (eg Tesco, Walmart tabs) or on accessories. That said, I think the kettle thing is mostly a). Companies will price things highly because they've found that people will pay that much, I reckon it's as simple as that.
csense 13y ago
Previous submission on electric kettles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018560 Also, electric kettles aren't really a thing in the US. Almost everybody uses the stovetop kind.
- tonyarkles 13y ago
  Wow, that's quite surprising! In Canada, I haven't seen a stovetop kettle in a while!
barrkel 13y ago
Why does the author seem to think that a digital solution is required for control over temperature? The bimetallic approach can be extended to select temperature. An analogue dial can adjust the switch cutoff position (or alternatively, the starting angle of the bimetallic strip) with a screw. All you'd need to do is calibrate the dial, and the added cost shouldn't be more than 50 US cents on the end retail price. IMO the reason a "good" kettle costs $90+ is because there isn't enough demand to create enough competition and support enough production to amortize the fixed costs. It's essentially a market broken apart into two of Porter's three fundamental strategies, cost leadership and differentiation. The cheapest kettles would be uncompetitive with a temperature selector even if it added only pennies, while the differentiated kettles have specific features for smaller, less cost sensitive markets. Most people simply don't need temperature selection.
- bbxiao1 13y ago
  Digital thermostats work on electrical resistance which is more accurate than bimetallic thermostats. Also bimetallic thermostats basically only switch at one temperature whereas most digital thermostats can handle a range. If you intend on using a kettle for both coffee and tea, that range is desired since the ideal temperatures between coffee and tea is quite significant.
  - barrkel 13y ago
    Pop-disc bimetallic thermostats switch at only one temperature, but the property of bimetallic expansion is in no way limited to switching at a single cutoff point. Here's a bimetallic adjustable thermostat: http://catalog.selcoproducts.com/item/adjustable-controls/adjustable-thermostats-tl-and-tor-series/pn-5213?&bc=0|1248 http://catalog.selcoproducts.com/item/adjustable-controls/ad... I'd be willing to make a large bet that a majority of people who brew both coffee and tea do so using boiling water or close to it. Black tea (breakfast tea) is best made with freshly boiled water, while I find coffee made with anything below 90C to be too weak - I generally use water made shortly off the boil when I'm using an Aeropress. I have zero doubt digital thermostats are more accurate. That wasn't the point.
  - 13y ago
gameshot911 13y ago
I happen to like the lcd screen console in the Tesla, so it was interesting how quickly the author lost much of the credibility I as the reader had given him when he falsely assumed that I too would agree that it was poor design.
- estebank 13y ago
  Read "The Design of Everyday Things". A touch LCD screen in a car is a demonstrably worse solution to car controls than old fashioned knobs and buttons that you can use while keeping your eyes on the road. I also see in that picture that the Tesla has a full color speedometer, which is a bad idea because it adds flair around the only thing you really care (current speed/rpm/is something broken?) and unless it has a night mode (which I have every reason to believe it does) it would be very bad for your night vision. It sure looks slicker, futuristic and trendy, but it's nothing but a gimmick. Also, who needs to browse the web on a car? But I digress.
  - lerchmo 13y ago
    Having used a tesla interface for over a year. I can't stand the 40 cryptic buttons in a regular car. Also I'm sure you can make similar arguments for a blackberry.
  - gameshot911 13y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation.
sleepyhead 13y ago
"Why Does A Good Kettle Cost $90+?" "Various manufacturing fixed cost (safety tests, product tests, etc) $5" "Marketing, stocking, etc fees $5" These figures are just arbitrary. Weakens his argument.
pg_is_a_butt 13y ago
why does a dumb consumer think a good kettle costs $90+? because they are dumb. http://www.target.com/p/aroma-hot-h20-x-press-7-cup-stainless-steel-electric-kettle/-/A-13795316#prodSlot=medium_1_14 http://www.target.com/p/aroma-hot-h20-x-press-7-cup-stainles...
VladRussian2 13y ago
in 2000 we bought stainless steel kettle for $70. Buying it i felt it was expensive, and there were cheaper plastic ones. My wife overruled. As usually she was right. In 2013 she said that its time to update (though the old one was still in pretty good shape and hadn't produced any issues during those 13 years with everyday usage - at morning once and several times in the evening), and we bought new, stainless steel, for $90 something. This time i didn't even said anything. Giving the retail markup of say 50% and wholesale markup of say 30%, the difference at the manufacturer of $90 vs. say $50 becomes $31 vs. $17 ($10 vs $5 BOM :)
fleitz 13y ago
$90 isn't bad, I paid $200 for one that steeps the tea as well. It costs that much because I'd rather pay $200 than spend my weekend making a kettle (producer surplus). Next thing you know someone will be wondering why drinks cost $10 for $1-2 worth of ingredients. If you want to save money just use a pot and boil the water in that, it's not like you really need a purpose built device for boiling water.
- syncopatience 13y ago
  An electric kettle uses a lot less energy than a pot on the stove to boil water. I wonder how much water you'd need to boil to break even?
  - fleitz 13y ago
    http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ask-pablo-electric-kettle-stove-or-microwave-oven.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ask-pablo-electri... You'll save between $2.50 and $5.00 per year boiling one cup of water per day.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
I read the article and most of the comments and I still can't figure out why on earth you would care how hot your teawater is, beyond "boiling"/"not yet boiling." All my life I have made tea with a ~$10 stovetop whistling kettle; no one has ever criticized it and it will never break.
- staticshock 13y ago
  Depending on how "into" tea you are, various teas require steeping for a specific duration of time under a specific temperature. See a website he mentions, steepster.com, where people talk almost exclusively about this topic.
  - memsom 13y ago
    ACK!! Steep is an alien word. In the UK you "brew" tea. "A good brew" is a colloquialism for a nice cup of tea. Honestly, tea geeks, tea is just tea. Unless you paid a large sum of money for the actual product, you put a bag in the cup and pour boiled water on to it. Let it brew. Remove bag. Add milk and sweetener as desired. Done.
    - lewispollard 13y ago
      > Honestly, tea geeks, tea is just tea. Bagged tea is shit tea. Good tea doesn't cost a large sum of money. Good tea tastes better if you don't burn it. Before you ask - yes I'm an Englishman ;)
      - aestra 13y ago
        Also who ruins tea with milk and sweetener? Tea is a beautiful thing on its own. Maybe you think tea is just tea because you can barely taste the tea over the milk and sugar? Also good tea is still cheap tea - only a few cents a cup.
        henderson101 13y ago
short_circut 13y ago
I wonder how much patent licencing adds to the cost. The author mentioned how wonderful of an idea this bimetallic strip was, but that means someone invented it and someone probably holds a patent on it. How much does it cost to use that innovation?
- code_duck 13y ago
  It's probable that that invention is old enough that is not currently under patent protection.
- uiri 13y ago
  Should be $0 since http://www.google.com/patents/US2987607 http://www.google.com/patents/US2987607 ought to be expired by now.
mng2 13y ago
>The most difficult part is the grounding of it – which metal kettles are in sore need of, lest they give you an electric shock. Appliances like these are generally 2-prong and therefore not connected to safety ground. Rather they are supposed to be "double insulated" for protection.
patio11 13y ago
Buy a container worth of kettles, register goodcheapkettles.com, sell them for a year, and this question will answer itself. Probably cheaper and more useful than studying business in undergrad.
yannk 13y ago
"water has ONE boiling temperature – 100 Celcius" Well, if you are at sea level, that is.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Or if you aren't using sea water, that is ;)
WalterBright 13y ago
Many startup businesses fail because they underprice their products. They underprice them because they do not account for what all of their costs are going to be.
zurn 13y ago
An easy way to get temperature controlled water with a standard kettle is to figure out how much cold water you need to add to the bottom of your mug before filling it with (just-boiled) water from the kettle. If you want more accuracy, you can use water from the fridge (which is better at keeping constant temperature than your cold water line).
maho 13y ago
> water has ONE boiling temperature – 100 Celcius This is not correct. The boiling point of water is a function of atmospheric pressure [1]. Weather changes the atmospheric pressure by up to 50mbar, which translates to a couple degrees of variation in the boiling point. The pressure variation due to height is even more severe [2]. At an elevation of 3000m the atmospheric pressure is typically only 700mbar, which means that water boils at 90 degrees. How does the basic bimetallic strip know the outside pressure and the boiling-point-curve of water so that is knows when to stop the kettle? I don't think it knows anything about that. Instead I assume once the water starts boiling, the bubbling steam-"padding" around the heating element lowers the heat transfer rate from the heating element to the liquid. This means that the heating element will quickly get a lot hotter until it reaches the threshold temperature of the bimetallic switch. [1] http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-point-water-d_926.html http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-point-water-d_926.... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure
- dsuth 13y ago
  Thermodynamics was never my favourite subject, but I suspect what happens is that the water boiling at the lower temperature created a higher pressure within the kettle (hence the screaming noise as pressure escapes the small nozzle), allowing the water to heat up to 100degC, and also the bimetallic strip.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Somebody answered this elsewhere, there is a vent that directs steam past the strip. So it isn't heated directly by the water in the kettle, but by the steam that is given off after it boils.
- asgard1024 13y ago
  Interesting. I was also wondering about this; how the kettle knows what the boiling point is, since it cannot just measure temperature, because it would boil out the water in the mountains. I thought there is electronics which simply detects not only absolute temperature, but also change. Once the temperature stops changing and is around 100 degrees, it will stop.
rtpg 13y ago
I'm surprised that someone can simultaneously acknowledge how neat the solution for the $10 kettle is, and then say that "the magic is gone". Seeing this increases the magic for me.
dzhiurgis 13y ago
Get normal kettle. Boil the water. Wait x minutes. Voila.
arethuza 13y ago
A really good kettle as used by the British Army costs around £4.2 million - even comes with the ability to move around and shoot things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2#Crew_and_accommodation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2#Crew_and_accommoda...
tehwalrus 13y ago
What do they teach in US schools? The three things I know they teach in UK secondary school physics (11-16s) are how to draw graphs wrong, how to wire a plug and how a kettle works! Also, who doesn't have a cheap kettle? (I actually have a £20 one, because I wanted a high wattage so it boils quicker, but in my defense I got it free with nectar points[1]. It is still plastic and the on/off LED broke within a week, but it boils enough water for my enormous free hackathon mug in like a minute.) [1] If you didn't know that Argos accepts nectar points, you're welcome. I have never paid for a kettle or microwave.
ccpks 13y ago
The estimate for cost of electronics is ludicrous. It is a micro controller, a relay, and a PSU. I can build that for $5 at low quantity. PID controllers cost $30 since you pay for low quantity and design. You can build ones from a $1 micro controller, or for even less in analog. Plus you do not need a pid. It makes no sense in that context. It is a thermostat. They cost what they cost due to product differentiation and similar.
scotty79 13y ago
Why anything but simplest faucets cost 50-200$ and just 2-3 models cost less than 20$? Because it's reasonably durable decorative item so theres no shortage of people willing to part with their money because it's just 5 times as expensive but 100 times prettier. The cheap ones are for people that just want faucet. Quality is pretty much the same.
anentropic 13y ago
Temperature controlled kettle...?? Isn't the point of a kettle to boil water?
- gnaffle 13y ago
  Not necessarily. Different teas brew best at different temperatures. A quick and easy solution of course is to boil the water and let it sit for a while until the temperature drops.
epaladin 13y ago
I wouldn't have thought to take apart a simple water boiler (at least not in recent years) so that was enlightening. Sometimes simple but functional designs can be fascinating, after getting to used to doing less with more (arduinos on everything) rather than more with less (completely mechanical control systems). I have a zojirushi, but only with three temperature settings. Maybe I should mod it to fully variable... although I really want to make a teapot with a built in thermometer more than anything. The water heater wouldn't cool fast enough to really make the variable temp worth it.
rdl 13y ago
I just use the Tatung version of this Newegg-house-brand (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16896268021 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16896268...), a $30-40 insulated hot water dispenser. If I had the money to buy the perfect Zojirushi, or found one on sale, I might (they're only around $100-150 now; they used to be $200+).
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
1. Because that's what people will pay for one. 2. Why does anyone need or even want a kettle with a PID controller? Does he know that people used to boil water over a fire?
xedarius 13y ago
Sounds to me like he had a difficult chapter coming up in the book he was writing and went looking for a distraction. We've all been there.
contingencies 13y ago
OK. So given all this thinking, where's the 3D printing era, JIT-manufactured, elegant hack in response that fundamentally rethinks the problem domain and is one with kettle-nature? I guess the author is saying "kettle is a kettle is a kettle" (except for price, certain design features that don't really count). One thing they left out of the estimate was the cost of passing national electrical safety regulator test regimes. As anyone who has actually produced new electronics can tell you, this can often be an expensive PITA... particularly for lower-volume products. 100,000 is not high volume. Please contribute your kettle hack ideas in this thread.
- contingencies 13y ago
  A kettle-element where it used sound to listen for the bubbling of water above instead of measuring heat and automatically dropped temperature. It could track immediate temperature variation (for pots within a certain distance) to attempt to detect waterless operation and perform a shutdown for safety (to prevent fire). A kettle where it doubles as other things. There are a wide variety of essentially similar cooking appliances (pressure cookers, slow cookers, kettles, Iranian-style rice cookers with crispyness-control, standard or Chinese-style rice cookers, stovetops, etc.) which should be possible to combine more elegantly than the wasteful duplication of the present.
rowyourboat 13y ago
Why would you need a PID controller? All you need to do is power the heating element until your sensor reads the desired temp, then shut it off. A PID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller) is way overkill. Also "PID tuning"? What would there be to tune? There's some serious overcomplication going on here.
upofadown 13y ago
Pedantic twitch. You wouldn't need the "I"(integral) in PID as we can only drive the system one way. You hardly need the "P"(proportional) either, if you are just trying to figure out when to shut off the power. That leaves shutting off the power based on how fast the water is heating up. So really just "D"(derivative) control. Which is super simple. ... and that is even assuming that there is enough thermal mass in the heating coil compared to the thermal mass of the water to ever make a difference. It is gotten to the point where I get a twitch whenever I see someone refer to the PID concept. In most cases it gets used in an inappropriate way.

176 points by boyter 13y ago

Retail margins are frequently 50%. (50% margin, 100% markup) Unless a company is vertically integrated. Does the author really not understand that? Markup/margin varies by product and retailer but is still one of the largest factors in the price you pay at retail.

chewxy 13y ago
Yeah, I figured so myself.

kevinchen 13y ago

> Unless of course, those $39 kettles use a digital solution to stop the water from boiling. Right, micros and temperature sensors are really expensive these days, especially at mass-production volumes. > But that is just rather silly, given that an analogue solution works better. tab closed

wffurr 13y ago
I guess you didn't get to the part where the author talks about PID controller tuning, temperature probes, and heat-proofing electronics. Do you have any reasons those statements bothered you or are you just a pro-digital kind of guy?
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  Yes, $30 is an insane estimate for the cost of a PID controller. Probably because nobody buys discrete PID hardware anymore because microcontrollers disrupted that market decades ago. You could easily implement thousands of PID controllers sufficient for this application on a $3 microcontroller with a $2 thermistor. Those are sparkfun prices, so 1/2 that would not be unreasonable for a BOM estimate. Sundry connectors and power transistors would cost more, but those will be present in the analog version as well. Temperature proofing is unnecessary - the sparkfun thermistor is rated to 125C and you can trade latency for max temp by moving it away from the heated parts. In this application you can afford to trade truckloads of latency. Also, this is not a project for 3EEs + 2 technicians, this is a project for 1 bored EE in an afternoon. I suspect calibrating the digital version would be 10x-100x easier on an industrial scale. I have no idea why or how he thinks the analog version would work better, so I can't really counter-argue.
  - Brashman 13y ago
    The PID controller was definitely the part that stuck out to me. To me, a PID controller is a method of designing a controller and thus essentially "free" to implement in software. Do you happen to know where this $30 number comes from? Also, I highly doubt that there's much variation in the "PID quality". This isn't a use case that should require especially careful controller design/tuning; it's not like your water temperature is going to see large sudden fluctuations. On a separate note, the price jumps from $16 to $45 going from the analog to digital version, though as far as I can see the only digital-specific additions are the EEs ($7) and PID controller ($10).
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
      On DigiKey I can find a bunch of PID controllers in the >$200 range. I suspect that the $30 figure comes from a discrete package that made economic sense long ago when one had to use op amps and tuning pots to build a PID circuit. Even though microcontrollers have disrupted that market, the ancient PID controllers will stick around in supply warehouses as long as the machines which used them need replacement parts. $30 (or $200) could be significantly above the original manufacturer price if the parts are no longer manufactured but are still in demand. If one has only ever heard of PID controllers as "the semi-magical black boxes used to solve control problems" then one might make the mistake of only looking through the purpose-built controllers rather than looking for the cheapest uC. As for your separate note, I noticed that inconsistency as well. I never figured it out, although by that point I was ~70% sure the whole analysis was botched so I didn't spend too much time thinking about it.

mesozoic 13y ago

A very long article that seems to not derive the simple answer of wholesale and retailer margins.

Semiapies 13y ago
And that does the usual geek thing of dismissing the idea that people do in fact pay for design differences.

GuiA 13y ago

I like the comment on the post: > "The kettle had caused the trip. It was no longer safe to use the kettle" > You know enough to start designing a temp. controlled kettle, and yet you overlooked the simple (and most likely) possibility that the kettle was on the same circuit with another high draw appliance (hair dryer, electric heater, etc.) and the combination of the two resulted in the trip from overload. And that there was nothing in fact wrong with the kettle at all. We sometimes forget that our hacker minds can be a weakness :)

gregory144 13y ago
It's possible he did consider that fact and the kettle wasn't on the same circuit with another high draw appliance.
- joshschreuder 13y ago
  The author responded: "Everyone else in the house was asleep. But yes, you’re right, I have overlooked that possibility"
ars 13y ago
Not to mention if your kettle caused your main breaker to trip you have some serious problems in your wiring, not your kettle. A kettle might cause a branch circuit to trip - but the whole house??? If that happens you have bigger problems than a kettle. (Plus in the UK plugs have built in fuses should trip first. So it's pretty doubtful it was the kettle.)
- kabouseng 13y ago
  An over current situation would trip the branch. A grounding issue would trip the main switch. If water came into the electric circuit causing a grounding of the current, then the main switch would trip. Nothing wrong with the house wiring.
  - ars 13y ago
    > A grounding issue would trip the main switch. If water came into the electric circuit causing a grounding of the current, then the main switch would trip. No it wouldn't. You could stick the bare wires of a branch circuit in water and it wouldn't trip the main breaker. The main breaker will trip if there is a short inside the panel (which is all but impossible unless you are working on it live - which is sometimes done). Or if you used so much electricity you simply overloaded it, but if you did that you have the wrong panel for your house (or you are running some crazy equipment - arc furnace, maybe).

arkitaip 13y ago

Glad I'm not the only one who frequently over thinks purchasing decisions :)

tim333 13y ago

I don't think a good kettle has to cost $90 - There's one one amazon with 80% 5 star reviews for $20. http://www.amazon.com/Courant-Cordless-Electric-Coffee-Makers/dp/B00BU6IHTE http://www.amazon.com/Courant-Cordless-Electric-Coffee-Maker... . Still there are lots of wealthy people with $100 + to spend so manufacturers will naturally make stuff for those price points if customers will buy it.

chewxy 13y ago
Which is my point. A basic kettle should not cost much. The $100 kettles are those with temperature controls.
brc 13y ago
I had an expensive kettle which was a gift. It lasted ten years but then started to leak and finally started tripping the breaker. I replaced it with a $20 plastic kettle which does everything the other one did, except boil faster and quieter. Just doesn't look as cool though. In reality, expensive kettles are like expensive clothes. They are probably made out of better materials, but the rest is just markup to cover the lower volumes and higher marketing costs. And because people will pay it for a brand name and sleek design.
dima55 13y ago
Please read the article. He's talking about temperature-controlled kettles. Yours only shuts off when boiling.

phaus 13y ago

>I don’t know how Hamilton Beach did it, and I’m exceedingly curious as to how. The people at Steepster don’t think too highly of it though, so there’s some clues there. In regards to the $45 variable temperature kettle. The folks at steepster probably didn't care for it because the temperature range is pretty narrow. For high-quality tea, 175-212F simply isn't a wide enough range. It's also not very precise. Many delicate green teas are best prepared at temperatures as low as 140F and in some cases just a few degrees can make a difference.

tostitos1979 13y ago

I've wanted a Zojirushi for a few months now. Heard really good things but also heard about the build up of scaling after some usage(I guess that depends on the type of water you use). I only drink black tea (using teabags - nothing fancy) so spending north of $100 seems overkill.

chewxy 13y ago
I grew up with one. Having instantly accessible hot water was amazing. Then I moved out and had to use a kettle
RogerL 13y ago
We just boil a bit of vinegar in ours every few weeks. Keeps it shiny and clean.
dylanz 13y ago
I've been meaning to buy a kettle, and this post made finally pull the trigger. I absolutely love my Zojirushi rice cooker, I have a Zojirushi thermos for my coffee which is perfect, and now I'm going to have a Zojirushi CV-DYC40 kettle. These (along with my Vitamix) are the only appliances I constantly take with me when I move.
stock_toaster 13y ago
Me too. The liner being "non-stick" is a bit concerning, but it seems like glass or uncoated metals are impossible to find. I imagine it has to do with scaling, discoloration, and/or lifetime. I have stayed with my old stovetop kettle until now, simply because it has no plastic/silicone/rubber in contact with the water.
markrages 13y ago
I've had a Zojirushi insulated pot for about ten years. I've got pretty hard water, but the scale just seems to build up and flake off in big chunks. The pot still works fine. The gasket hardened and cracked, but Zojirushi USA sells parts online. It was about $10 for a new one.
muhfuhkuh 13y ago

tptacek 13y ago

Bear in mind that the price of insurance and UL certification is also built into these devices. Heat, huge amounts of electricity, water, hands: lots of liability. Is PID control all that expensive? Aren't you talking about a microcontroller, a thermocouple, and a relay?

chewxy 13y ago
I've been given different prices on that. Some people say it's just $0.50, some claim it's more than $10 to buy PIDs in bulk.
- tptacek 13y ago
  I've never done a PID from scratch, but a friend of mine did for a home espresso setup. I'm suggesting, instead of pricing a PID part, you price the components of a PID. I think the SS relay might be the most expensive part there.
  - chewxy 13y ago
    You have a point. Costing the components of a PID might actually be better. That said, a PID controller for my espresso machine cost about $200, but that was everything packaged in nicely.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      That's an insane price.
      - sk5t 13y ago
        The espresso machine kits traditionally use industrial PID controllers from Fuji and the like, which (did and still do) cost about $200. It looks like there are lots of nice $35 options now... neat.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      A mechanical spring thermometer that goes from 0 to 120 degrees C costs ~£3. Add a microswitch and a relay and you should be fine. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Budget-Surface-Pipe-Thermometer-/370988569892?nma=true&si=M5EdqCeNKH%252BlwMGT0tsvpjbGigQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Budget-Surface-Pipe-Thermometer-/3...

BgSpnnrs 13y ago

Bought a kettle today, £12. I guess in the UK they are counted as a necessity and are cheap :P

pbhjpbhj 13y ago
I bought one recently in the UK - cheapest plastic ones were too flimsy (last couple of kettles died from broken plastic parts [eg in over-complicated lid catches]). Metal ones at the next level up didn't have a level indicator to see how full it is without opening the lid. Next level up from that was about £25-30. IIRC we paid ~£25 after discount. The best value, of those I found, excluding aesthetics was ~£22 .
boyter 13y ago
They are cheap in Australia as well since so many people drink tea. I had a $10 one which lasted for years.

joosters 13y ago

Your electric kettle almost certainly uses a thermostat patented by John Taylor [1], who made his fortune with the things. Effectively, your kettle helped pay for the wonderful Corpus Clock [2] - 'the strangest clock in the world' :) [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(inventor) [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock

chewxy 13y ago
If so, such an elegant solution. So elegant.
- joosters 13y ago
  Yes. In a world of dodgy software patents, it's pleasing to see good 'real' patents.
jdlshore 13y ago
That clock is wonderful. Thanks for sharing it.

semerda 13y ago

Maybe someone could shed some light why this simple stainless steel kettle is worth $179.95? Is it the Small Bird Shaped Whistle ;-) lol http://www.amazon.com/Alessi-Michael-Graves-Kettle-Whistle/dp/B00004Y6FT http://www.amazon.com/Alessi-Michael-Graves-Kettle-Whistle/d...

lingben 13y ago
you're paying for the alessi name and design (Italian)
- erdle2 13y ago
  The design is American, the manufacturer is Italian. And I believe the design for that kettle in particular was done in New Jersey.

lingben 13y ago

For me the perfect kettle is a simple glass kettle because I've found that it doesn't change the taste of water whereas metal or plastic kettles do. Also, I don't like the idea of heated plastic compounds leaching into my water. Bonus, it looks cool to see the water start to form bubbles and then to go into a full on boil!

Angostura 13y ago
I challenge you to a blind trial. I very much suspect that using an electric kettle and a glass kettle you would not be able to taste the difference of the water once cooled. (We'll run the electric kettle twice with clean water followed by a flush, as most manuals state.
- lingben 13y ago
  you're probably right, it may be all in my mind :)
rplnt 13y ago
> Also, I don't like the idea of heated plastic compounds leaching into my water. I don't like the idea to getting burned on my kettle. So if anyone is looking for a kettle that should be metal, invest in one with double walls if you want it for the "look" or one that has palstic outside if you want it for the "taste". Having cheap metal kettle is much worse than having even cheaper plastic one in my opinion.

kintamanimatt 13y ago

The quick answer is supply chain markup. Stuff isn't sold at cost because that's usually not a winning, sustainable strategy. Distributors (if there are any), manufacturers, and retailers will all want to cover their (varying) overheads as well as make a profit. The largest profit is generally made by the the retailer. A bricks and mortar store has markups of about 100%. All the above is why you sometimes hear people talking about shorting their supply chains because it means lower trade prices, which in turn allows for increased profits, an increased ability to compete on price, or both.

mbrutsch 13y ago

> Using a bimetallic strip to trigger a mechanical trigger is simply quite a brilliantly elegant way of solving a problem. For over 200 years, no less: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallic_strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallic_strip . It's cute how he seems to think this is a novel solution.

vacri 13y ago

the price over a mass amount of units (say 100,000 units) This almost made me laugh out loud. Exactly how many kettles does the author think sells each year? Multiply by models and again by manufacturers, and you're talking millions of kettles. Even if you consider that one model will last multiple years, manufacturers don't buy supply batches that last for years. Some industries go in the extreme other direction - the local car industry got its stock-on-shelf lifetime down to 48 minutes from part arriving to part being screwed into car. Similarly, retail markup is generally 20-50% of the final cost. If you think this is too high (it really isn't) then I suggest you use your new formula to undercut the existing market and disrupt away. Other significant costs are transport and wholesalers (who aren't always the manufacturers). Kettles are bulky items that consume a lot of space in storage and transport. On top of all this, every party involved in the transaction is entitled to make some profit, and not just work for costs. There's also regulatory compliance, things like the CE mark. Looking at an item and stating that the price shouldn't be more than parts + amortised kickback to the designers is naievity, plain and simple.

chewxy 13y ago
I thought that markup was implicitly accepted in blog. I of course do not think that the price should be just the cost of the parts. In fact, I did mention that the fact that both $10 kettles and $39 kettles exist implies that there is some form of price discrimination. The difference in price is the additional markup that the manufacturer can get away with. As I mentioned, my marginal utility does not increase with the markup - a $39 kettle gives me the same utility as a $10 kettle. As for 100,000 units, yeah, that was probably a mistake. Australia only has 22 million people. No idea why I arbitrarily picked 100,000.
- vacri 13y ago
  Yeah, I read through in more detail and saw that lurking towards the end. Just came back to edit, perhaps delete the comment but it's already replied-to. :) The costings at the end are off. Testing is much less that $5/unit for these kind of things, for example. Usually you'll have a common testbench across all products - it'll be much lower per unit, and not tied to a particular model. Also, retailers aren't the only ones in the pricing process - as I say above, wholesalers/distributors and transport also get figured into the cost. It all adds up. Marketing costs are mostly borne by the retailer portion of the price, as the wholesale channel marketing is much more limited and cost-effective (no tv or radio spots, print one catalogue and you're fine for a quarter/year, run a more niche website only for retailers, etc) The Australia-limited market thing is less of an issue - a kettle will have a market wider than this. But kettles generally last a long time, and there are hundreds of models out there. Though to honest, after a friend's horror story of one day finding a cockroach in her kettle that had been boiled white, I'm much keener on glass kettles now...

shurcooL 13y ago

And a 4K TV costs under $500.

Aloha 13y ago

why not just use a stovetop kettle? Obviously, not all places have stoves - but every place I've wanted to make hot water in has - or a microwave/

pangram 13y ago
Convenience, mostly -- with an electric kettle you can just hit a button and when it pops back it's ready. Also, if you happen to get involved with something and forget about the kettle, it's not a big deal; not so with the stove.
- Aloha 13y ago
  my stovetop kettle whistles loudly when at boiling.
  - CCs 13y ago
    But when it runs out of water (or you forget to fill it up), it just burns...
cecilpl 13y ago
A regular kettle is far more efficient.
- Aloha 13y ago
  Cite?

BertrandP 13y ago

tl;dr anyone?

stefan_kendall 13y ago

Why does an "X" cost "$Y+"? Because that's the price the market will bear for X. Cost has nothing to do with it. If I could sell you a kettle for $100,000 that cost me $100 to build, I would absolutely do it.

thatthatis 13y ago
He implicitly assumes (and I think correctly so) an efficient competitive market with zero economic profits.

Paul_S 13y ago

I like to think that often the main difference between cheap and expensive is the amount of QA done so I don't have to do the testing for the manufacturer. Though that's probably very naive on my part.

shalmanese 13y ago

People here are forgetting that you can buy a fully functioning tablet on a retail shelf for less than the cost of a temperature controlled kettle. You can buy a tablet AND a conventional kettle for less than the cost of the temperature controlled kettle. Tablet makers have to deal with QC and retail markup and all of the other things mentioned in this thread as possible drivers of the price so I don't find many of the explanations convincing. In reality, it's likely that either a) these things are being sold at massive profit margins or b) they're being produced very inefficiently with lots of waste in the production process.

lewispollard 13y ago
I think a lot of cheap tablets are loss leaders, and the manufacturers don't make any profit (or even lose money) and hope to make more money by bringing them into their retail stores (eg Tesco, Walmart tabs) or on accessories. That said, I think the kettle thing is mostly a). Companies will price things highly because they've found that people will pay that much, I reckon it's as simple as that.

csense 13y ago

Previous submission on electric kettles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018560 Also, electric kettles aren't really a thing in the US. Almost everybody uses the stovetop kind.

tonyarkles 13y ago
Wow, that's quite surprising! In Canada, I haven't seen a stovetop kettle in a while!

barrkel 13y ago

Why does the author seem to think that a digital solution is required for control over temperature? The bimetallic approach can be extended to select temperature. An analogue dial can adjust the switch cutoff position (or alternatively, the starting angle of the bimetallic strip) with a screw. All you'd need to do is calibrate the dial, and the added cost shouldn't be more than 50 US cents on the end retail price. IMO the reason a "good" kettle costs $90+ is because there isn't enough demand to create enough competition and support enough production to amortize the fixed costs. It's essentially a market broken apart into two of Porter's three fundamental strategies, cost leadership and differentiation. The cheapest kettles would be uncompetitive with a temperature selector even if it added only pennies, while the differentiated kettles have specific features for smaller, less cost sensitive markets. Most people simply don't need temperature selection.

bbxiao1 13y ago
Digital thermostats work on electrical resistance which is more accurate than bimetallic thermostats. Also bimetallic thermostats basically only switch at one temperature whereas most digital thermostats can handle a range. If you intend on using a kettle for both coffee and tea, that range is desired since the ideal temperatures between coffee and tea is quite significant.
- barrkel 13y ago
  Pop-disc bimetallic thermostats switch at only one temperature, but the property of bimetallic expansion is in no way limited to switching at a single cutoff point. Here's a bimetallic adjustable thermostat: http://catalog.selcoproducts.com/item/adjustable-controls/adjustable-thermostats-tl-and-tor-series/pn-5213?&bc=0|1248 http://catalog.selcoproducts.com/item/adjustable-controls/ad... I'd be willing to make a large bet that a majority of people who brew both coffee and tea do so using boiling water or close to it. Black tea (breakfast tea) is best made with freshly boiled water, while I find coffee made with anything below 90C to be too weak - I generally use water made shortly off the boil when I'm using an Aeropress. I have zero doubt digital thermostats are more accurate. That wasn't the point.
- 13y ago

gameshot911 13y ago

I happen to like the lcd screen console in the Tesla, so it was interesting how quickly the author lost much of the credibility I as the reader had given him when he falsely assumed that I too would agree that it was poor design.

estebank 13y ago
Read "The Design of Everyday Things". A touch LCD screen in a car is a demonstrably worse solution to car controls than old fashioned knobs and buttons that you can use while keeping your eyes on the road. I also see in that picture that the Tesla has a full color speedometer, which is a bad idea because it adds flair around the only thing you really care (current speed/rpm/is something broken?) and unless it has a night mode (which I have every reason to believe it does) it would be very bad for your night vision. It sure looks slicker, futuristic and trendy, but it's nothing but a gimmick. Also, who needs to browse the web on a car? But I digress.
- lerchmo 13y ago
  Having used a tesla interface for over a year. I can't stand the 40 cryptic buttons in a regular car. Also I'm sure you can make similar arguments for a blackberry.
- gameshot911 13y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation.

sleepyhead 13y ago

"Why Does A Good Kettle Cost $90+?" "Various manufacturing fixed cost (safety tests, product tests, etc) $5" "Marketing, stocking, etc fees $5" These figures are just arbitrary. Weakens his argument.

pg_is_a_butt 13y ago

why does a dumb consumer think a good kettle costs $90+? because they are dumb. http://www.target.com/p/aroma-hot-h20-x-press-7-cup-stainless-steel-electric-kettle/-/A-13795316#prodSlot=medium_1_14 http://www.target.com/p/aroma-hot-h20-x-press-7-cup-stainles...

VladRussian2 13y ago

in 2000 we bought stainless steel kettle for $70. Buying it i felt it was expensive, and there were cheaper plastic ones. My wife overruled. As usually she was right. In 2013 she said that its time to update (though the old one was still in pretty good shape and hadn't produced any issues during those 13 years with everyday usage - at morning once and several times in the evening), and we bought new, stainless steel, for $90 something. This time i didn't even said anything. Giving the retail markup of say 50% and wholesale markup of say 30%, the difference at the manufacturer of $90 vs. say $50 becomes $31 vs. $17 ($10 vs $5 BOM :)

fleitz 13y ago

$90 isn't bad, I paid $200 for one that steeps the tea as well. It costs that much because I'd rather pay $200 than spend my weekend making a kettle (producer surplus). Next thing you know someone will be wondering why drinks cost $10 for $1-2 worth of ingredients. If you want to save money just use a pot and boil the water in that, it's not like you really need a purpose built device for boiling water.

syncopatience 13y ago
An electric kettle uses a lot less energy than a pot on the stove to boil water. I wonder how much water you'd need to boil to break even?
- fleitz 13y ago
  http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ask-pablo-electric-kettle-stove-or-microwave-oven.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ask-pablo-electri... You'll save between $2.50 and $5.00 per year boiling one cup of water per day.

PhasmaFelis 13y ago

I read the article and most of the comments and I still can't figure out why on earth you would care how hot your teawater is, beyond "boiling"/"not yet boiling." All my life I have made tea with a ~$10 stovetop whistling kettle; no one has ever criticized it and it will never break.

staticshock 13y ago
Depending on how "into" tea you are, various teas require steeping for a specific duration of time under a specific temperature. See a website he mentions, steepster.com, where people talk almost exclusively about this topic.
- memsom 13y ago
  ACK!! Steep is an alien word. In the UK you "brew" tea. "A good brew" is a colloquialism for a nice cup of tea. Honestly, tea geeks, tea is just tea. Unless you paid a large sum of money for the actual product, you put a bag in the cup and pour boiled water on to it. Let it brew. Remove bag. Add milk and sweetener as desired. Done.
  - lewispollard 13y ago
    > Honestly, tea geeks, tea is just tea. Bagged tea is shit tea. Good tea doesn't cost a large sum of money. Good tea tastes better if you don't burn it. Before you ask - yes I'm an Englishman ;)
    - aestra 13y ago
      Also who ruins tea with milk and sweetener? Tea is a beautiful thing on its own. Maybe you think tea is just tea because you can barely taste the tea over the milk and sugar? Also good tea is still cheap tea - only a few cents a cup.
      - henderson101 13y ago

short_circut 13y ago

I wonder how much patent licencing adds to the cost. The author mentioned how wonderful of an idea this bimetallic strip was, but that means someone invented it and someone probably holds a patent on it. How much does it cost to use that innovation?

code_duck 13y ago
It's probable that that invention is old enough that is not currently under patent protection.
uiri 13y ago
Should be $0 since http://www.google.com/patents/US2987607 http://www.google.com/patents/US2987607 ought to be expired by now.

mng2 13y ago

>The most difficult part is the grounding of it – which metal kettles are in sore need of, lest they give you an electric shock. Appliances like these are generally 2-prong and therefore not connected to safety ground. Rather they are supposed to be "double insulated" for protection.

patio11 13y ago

Buy a container worth of kettles, register goodcheapkettles.com, sell them for a year, and this question will answer itself. Probably cheaper and more useful than studying business in undergrad.

yannk 13y ago

"water has ONE boiling temperature – 100 Celcius" Well, if you are at sea level, that is.

Ygg2 13y ago
Or if you aren't using sea water, that is ;)

WalterBright 13y ago

Many startup businesses fail because they underprice their products. They underprice them because they do not account for what all of their costs are going to be.

zurn 13y ago

An easy way to get temperature controlled water with a standard kettle is to figure out how much cold water you need to add to the bottom of your mug before filling it with (just-boiled) water from the kettle. If you want more accuracy, you can use water from the fridge (which is better at keeping constant temperature than your cold water line).

maho 13y ago

> water has ONE boiling temperature – 100 Celcius This is not correct. The boiling point of water is a function of atmospheric pressure [1]. Weather changes the atmospheric pressure by up to 50mbar, which translates to a couple degrees of variation in the boiling point. The pressure variation due to height is even more severe [2]. At an elevation of 3000m the atmospheric pressure is typically only 700mbar, which means that water boils at 90 degrees. How does the basic bimetallic strip know the outside pressure and the boiling-point-curve of water so that is knows when to stop the kettle? I don't think it knows anything about that. Instead I assume once the water starts boiling, the bubbling steam-"padding" around the heating element lowers the heat transfer rate from the heating element to the liquid. This means that the heating element will quickly get a lot hotter until it reaches the threshold temperature of the bimetallic switch. [1] http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-point-water-d_926.html http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-point-water-d_926.... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure

dsuth 13y ago
Thermodynamics was never my favourite subject, but I suspect what happens is that the water boiling at the lower temperature created a higher pressure within the kettle (hence the screaming noise as pressure escapes the small nozzle), allowing the water to heat up to 100degC, and also the bimetallic strip.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Somebody answered this elsewhere, there is a vent that directs steam past the strip. So it isn't heated directly by the water in the kettle, but by the steam that is given off after it boils.
asgard1024 13y ago
Interesting. I was also wondering about this; how the kettle knows what the boiling point is, since it cannot just measure temperature, because it would boil out the water in the mountains. I thought there is electronics which simply detects not only absolute temperature, but also change. Once the temperature stops changing and is around 100 degrees, it will stop.

rtpg 13y ago

I'm surprised that someone can simultaneously acknowledge how neat the solution for the $10 kettle is, and then say that "the magic is gone". Seeing this increases the magic for me.

dzhiurgis 13y ago

Get normal kettle. Boil the water. Wait x minutes. Voila.

arethuza 13y ago

A really good kettle as used by the British Army costs around £4.2 million - even comes with the ability to move around and shoot things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2#Crew_and_accommodation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2#Crew_and_accommoda...

tehwalrus 13y ago

What do they teach in US schools? The three things I know they teach in UK secondary school physics (11-16s) are how to draw graphs wrong, how to wire a plug and how a kettle works! Also, who doesn't have a cheap kettle? (I actually have a £20 one, because I wanted a high wattage so it boils quicker, but in my defense I got it free with nectar points[1]. It is still plastic and the on/off LED broke within a week, but it boils enough water for my enormous free hackathon mug in like a minute.) [1] If you didn't know that Argos accepts nectar points, you're welcome. I have never paid for a kettle or microwave.

ccpks 13y ago

The estimate for cost of electronics is ludicrous. It is a micro controller, a relay, and a PSU. I can build that for $5 at low quantity. PID controllers cost $30 since you pay for low quantity and design. You can build ones from a $1 micro controller, or for even less in analog. Plus you do not need a pid. It makes no sense in that context. It is a thermostat. They cost what they cost due to product differentiation and similar.

scotty79 13y ago

Why anything but simplest faucets cost 50-200$ and just 2-3 models cost less than 20$? Because it's reasonably durable decorative item so theres no shortage of people willing to part with their money because it's just 5 times as expensive but 100 times prettier. The cheap ones are for people that just want faucet. Quality is pretty much the same.

anentropic 13y ago

Temperature controlled kettle...?? Isn't the point of a kettle to boil water?

gnaffle 13y ago
Not necessarily. Different teas brew best at different temperatures. A quick and easy solution of course is to boil the water and let it sit for a while until the temperature drops.

epaladin 13y ago

I wouldn't have thought to take apart a simple water boiler (at least not in recent years) so that was enlightening. Sometimes simple but functional designs can be fascinating, after getting to used to doing less with more (arduinos on everything) rather than more with less (completely mechanical control systems). I have a zojirushi, but only with three temperature settings. Maybe I should mod it to fully variable... although I really want to make a teapot with a built in thermometer more than anything. The water heater wouldn't cool fast enough to really make the variable temp worth it.

rdl 13y ago

I just use the Tatung version of this Newegg-house-brand (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16896268021 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16896268...), a $30-40 insulated hot water dispenser. If I had the money to buy the perfect Zojirushi, or found one on sale, I might (they're only around $100-150 now; they used to be $200+).

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

1. Because that's what people will pay for one. 2. Why does anyone need or even want a kettle with a PID controller? Does he know that people used to boil water over a fire?

xedarius 13y ago

Sounds to me like he had a difficult chapter coming up in the book he was writing and went looking for a distraction. We've all been there.

contingencies 13y ago

OK. So given all this thinking, where's the 3D printing era, JIT-manufactured, elegant hack in response that fundamentally rethinks the problem domain and is one with kettle-nature? I guess the author is saying "kettle is a kettle is a kettle" (except for price, certain design features that don't really count). One thing they left out of the estimate was the cost of passing national electrical safety regulator test regimes. As anyone who has actually produced new electronics can tell you, this can often be an expensive PITA... particularly for lower-volume products. 100,000 is not high volume. Please contribute your kettle hack ideas in this thread.

contingencies 13y ago
A kettle-element where it used sound to listen for the bubbling of water above instead of measuring heat and automatically dropped temperature. It could track immediate temperature variation (for pots within a certain distance) to attempt to detect waterless operation and perform a shutdown for safety (to prevent fire). A kettle where it doubles as other things. There are a wide variety of essentially similar cooking appliances (pressure cookers, slow cookers, kettles, Iranian-style rice cookers with crispyness-control, standard or Chinese-style rice cookers, stovetops, etc.) which should be possible to combine more elegantly than the wasteful duplication of the present.

rowyourboat 13y ago

Why would you need a PID controller? All you need to do is power the heating element until your sensor reads the desired temp, then shut it off. A PID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller) is way overkill. Also "PID tuning"? What would there be to tune? There's some serious overcomplication going on here.

upofadown 13y ago

Pedantic twitch. You wouldn't need the "I"(integral) in PID as we can only drive the system one way. You hardly need the "P"(proportional) either, if you are just trying to figure out when to shut off the power. That leaves shutting off the power based on how fast the water is heating up. So really just "D"(derivative) control. Which is super simple. ... and that is even assuming that there is enough thermal mass in the heating coil compared to the thermal mass of the water to ever make a difference. It is gotten to the point where I get a twitch whenever I see someone refer to the PID concept. In most cases it gets used in an inappropriate way.