
Why Does A Good Kettle Cost $90+? - boyter
http://blog.chewxy.com/2014/01/20/why-does-a-good-kettle-cost-90
======
vacri
_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.

~~~
thatthatis
Say 10% of American households and 80% of British households buy electric tea
kettles that last exactly 10 years each.

That's 10 million total market in the US (100 x .1) and about 16 million in
the UK (~20 x .8).

So 26 million total market with a level 1/10th per year or 2.6 million kettles
per year. At 100k run per year per manufacturer, the market can then support
26 different models easily.

On the second point, It seemed that he was adding the 2x retail markup into
his figures. If you'd followed the link on amazon, you'd see that $90 was
market down from about $200.

Sometimes it's best to ask "what would you have to believe for this to be
right" before you tear into someone for faulty analysis. All of his number
easily pass my smoke tests.

~~~
teamonkey
Coming from the UK I can't believe that only 80% of households own an electric
kettle. The idea of going to someone's house and not finding a kettle seems
genuinely ludicrous. Not just houses - almost every break room of every
business will have one.

Of course, they cost quite a bit less on average in the UK.

~~~
petercooper
Maybe the other 20% own non-electric kettles, like us, or have one-touch
boiling water systems, like my parents.

When our last electric kettle blew up 3-4 years ago, we decided to go with a
good, old fashioned metal kettle that we use on the hob. Works well, doesn't
ever break, and even makes it a bit more of an 'event' to put the kettle on as
you get all the boiling sounds, the whistle going off, etc.

My parents, on the other hand, have a thing that produces boiling water at the
touch a button so they just use that to dump water into their mugs instead.

Either way, an electric kettle is far from the only solution .

~~~
rmc
_Maybe the other 20% own non-electric kettles_

You mean those old fashioned kettles that are little more than a pot that you
put on the hob? Nope. No way do 20% of UK houses have that sort of old
fashioned system. That's like claiming 20% of UK houses still have outhouses
and don't have indoor toilets.

It always amazes me how the ridiculuous old fashioned non-electric kettles are
still popular in USA.

~~~
unethical_ban
Wait, a kettle[1] that you put on the stove and whistles when it's boiling
isn't the standard in the UK?

It's what I use for preparing hot water, and I have no issue with it. That's
when I want tea or french-press coffee [2]. Sometimes I use an electric
percolator[3] for coffee, and what a cup it can make!

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Teakettle-Litres-
Whistling-X...](http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Teakettle-Litres-Whistling-
XM009/dp/B00ANZZKYI/)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Bodum-Brazil-French-
Coffee-34-Ounce/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Bodum-Brazil-French-
Coffee-34-Ounce/dp/B000KEM4TQ)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Presto-02811-12-Cup-Stainless-
Coffee/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Presto-02811-12-Cup-Stainless-
Coffee/dp/B00006IV0Q/)

~~~
rmc
_Wait, a kettle[1] that you put on the stove and whistles when it 's boiling
isn't the standard in the UK?_

Nope, it's a hilarious anacronism. Like seeing a washboard to hand wash your
clothes. :)

------
GuiA
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 :)

~~~
ars
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
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
> 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).

~~~
Robin_Message
Main breakers in the UK are often RCDs, which do in fact trip in the case of
grounding issues. The main breaker usually feeds into several circuit
breakers.

Generally the wiring goes: mains input -> 1 or more RCDs -> several circuit
breakers -> several outlets -> fuse in plug -> appliance.

So a grounding fault can take out many circuits, and many-lots of sockets.

~~~
ars
OK, that's new to me. They really do that? One RCD for several breakers? How
is the panel wired - how do you pick which breakers are on which RCD?

That must cause so many nuisance trips - doesn't seem like a good idea (kinda
like the ring circuit that to this day causes trouble).

In the US you can have an RCD (called a GFCI here) in the panel, but it feeds
a single branch.

~~~
Robin_Message
I'm only going on our panel, which is perhaps slightly non-standard due to
another UK electricity quirk [1], but was done by an electrician last year so
is up to regulations at least.

It has a split in the bus, so there are two RCDs, one on the left with a
couple of breakers and one on the right with the rest of the breakers, and a
separator in the middle.

Like:

    
    
        supply in -> R-B-B | B-B-B-B-B-R <- supply in
                     C R R | R-R R R R C
        neutral   -> D-K-K | K-K-K-K-K-D <- neutral
    

[1] The quirk of our board is that the left hand breaker is driven by a
separate supply cable from the meter, which is only turned on between midnight
and 7am. In this way, we get cheaper electricity at night which is used for
storage heaters and immersion water heater. However, we no longer have the
storage heaters, so it doesn't really make sense. This set up is called
Economy 7
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7)).

Also, @alextingle, I didn't know that you were meant to have two separate
circuits, although that makes sense. Lots of things are required to be RCD
protected in the UK, so as you say, it makes sense just to put everything
behind an RCD. We don't get any nuisance trips, which I attribute to a
generally higher standard of wiring, earthing etc. in the UK, although that
could just be jingoism :) (I did once live in the US and some of the literally
fraying wiring connected to two pin sockets with no earthing in the house I
lived in scared me.)

------
tptacek
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
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
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
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
That's an insane price.

~~~
sk5t
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.

------
barrkel
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
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
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/ad...](http://catalog.selcoproducts.com/item/adjustable-
controls/adjustable-thermostats-tl-and-tor-series/pn-5213?&bc=0|1248)

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.

------
joosters
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
If so, such an elegant solution. So elegant.

~~~
joosters
Yes. In a world of dodgy software patents, it's pleasing to see good 'real'
patents.

------
shalmanese
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
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.

------
maho
> 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....](http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-point-water-d_926.html)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure)

~~~
dsuth
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
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.

------
PhasmaFelis
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.

~~~
teaComposition
So, for tea at least, and green tea in particular, water temperature is
actually very important. This is often overlooked by people (at least in my
experience in America). I've had many friends who claimed to hate Green Tea
because it is bitter. But they changed their minds when I brewed them a cup
and explained that it is important not to burn the leaves with hot water and
then over-steep the tea---rather than boiling water you often want water
considerably cooler, say 150-180 F, depending on the tea. You also don't want
to steep for too long (often just a minute or two, again depends on the tea).

~~~
scotty79
When I was younger I used to hate bitter tastes, I used to shiver when I
tasted some. But at some point the only thing to drink at our office was the
tea, and sugar ran out quickly so I adjusted. I barely feel bitter taste now
and only if I put a tea bag in cup of hot water and drink it after a while
without taking out the bag or stirring it.

------
patio11
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.

------
tim333
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-Maker...](http://www.amazon.com/Courant-Cordless-Electric-Coffee-
Makers/dp/B00BU6IHTE) . 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.

~~~
brc
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.

------
aychedee
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
Yeah, I figured so myself.

------
arethuza
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_accommoda...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2#Crew_and_accommodation)

------
lingben
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
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
you're probably right, it may be all in my mind :)

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

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

------
csense
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
Wow, that's quite surprising! In Canada, I haven't seen a stovetop kettle in a
while!

------
contingencies
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
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.

------
epaladin
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.

------
phaus
>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.

------
BgSpnnrs
Bought a kettle today, £12.

I guess in the UK they are counted as a necessity and are cheap :P

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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 .

------
zurn
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).

------
mbrutsch
> 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.

------
scotty79
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.

------
tostitos1979
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.

~~~
jrockway
I've had a Zojirushi boiler for about 6 years and have only descaled it twice.
It's very easy, you just dump some citric acid in there, set it to the
cleaning cycle, and dump the water out. Rinse it a couple times to remove any
extra citric acid, though that's only for flavor reasons; it's food-grade
citric acid.

The instructions say to dump the water out every day and start fresh in the
morning. I don't do that, because I am too lazy.

------
mng2
>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.

------
upofadown
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.

------
Aloha
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
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
my stovetop kettle whistles loudly when at boiling.

~~~
CCs
But when it runs out of water (or you forget to fill it up), it just burns...

------
VladRussian2
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 :)

------
tehwalrus
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.

------
yannk
"water has ONE boiling temperature – 100 Celcius"

Well, if you are at sea level, that is.

~~~
Ygg2
Or if you aren't using sea water, that is ;)

------
kintamanimatt
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.

------
WalterBright
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.

------
rdl
I just use the Tatung version of this Newegg-house-brand
([http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16896268...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16896268021)),
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+).

------
ccpks
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.

------
rowyourboat
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.

------
fleitz
$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
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
[http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ask-pablo-
electri...](http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ask-pablo-electric-
kettle-stove-or-microwave-oven.html)

You'll save between $2.50 and $5.00 per year boiling one cup of water per day.

------
semerda
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/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Alessi-Michael-Graves-Kettle-
Whistle/dp/B00004Y6FT)

~~~
lingben
you're paying for the alessi name and design (Italian)

~~~
erdle2
The design is American, the manufacturer is Italian. And I believe the design
for that kettle in particular was done in New Jersey.

------
short_circut
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?

~~~
uiri
Should be $0 since
[http://www.google.com/patents/US2987607](http://www.google.com/patents/US2987607)
ought to be expired by now.

------
gameshot911
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
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
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.

------
sleepyhead
"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.

------
Paul_S
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.

------
rtpg
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.

------
fnordfnordfnord
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
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.

------
anentropic
Temperature controlled kettle...?? Isn't the point of a kettle to _boil_
water?

~~~
gnaffle
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.

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

------
shurcooL
And a 4K TV costs under $500.

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

------
BertrandP
tl;dr anyone?

------
stefan_kendall
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
He implicitly assumes (and I think correctly so) an efficient competitive
market with zero economic profits.

------
kevinchen
> 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
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
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
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
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.

