That's a great idea - I wonder if electric kettles would be more popular in the US if they worked as quickly as they do on 240V? How large a volume of battery would one need to accomplish this, I wonder?
Most Americans don’t drink tea and most coffeemakers heat water themselves. For most other applications using a pot on a stove is not a deal breaker.
Euro standards are 8-10A 240V circuits. I have an EU kettle, and it draws max 2200W.
US standards are 15A 120V circuits. It could draw 1800W, though some kettles might limit to 12A and draw 1440W.
So a Euro kettle might have 22%-52% more power than a US, which increases a 4 minute boil to 4m53s or 6m7s worst case.
So it seems like it's not a significant factor, though it would be useful if US kettles really maximize power.
Our electric circuits aren't rated for 13A continuous draw (e.g. plug-in EV chargers should be set to 8A or 10A), but they are fine at 13A for the few minutes it takes to boil a kettle. 2.2kW kettles would be a major drain on productivity: millions of extra minutes spent every day waiting for a cup of tea!
Perhaps electric cars limit their draw below 13A as they're much more likely to be connected using extension leads.
Hrm, which country is that? Something between 13 and 16 amps is normal everywhere in Western Europe that I can think of, at 230V.
In Ireland, any random kettle that you buy is likely to be 3kW (pedantically, 2.99kW); you do sometimes see 2.2kW ones, generally _very_ cheap ones.
The Swiss outlets in my recent construction apartment were 8A. The standard allows a different outlet with higher amperage but I only ever saw that in commercial settings, similar to US 20A outlets.
That said, 2.2kW kettles definitely do seem to be more common there than here in Ireland (where 13 amp outlets are standard).