It’s very bizarre to me how you can get very inexpensive single burner countertop induction plates ($50-100), but multi-burner built-in cooktops are dramatically more expensive ($1000-4000). Anybody know why this is?
Is the US most homes use combination stove/ovens called ranges. These are the cheap option because they are mass produced. Stovetops are more common in bigger, more expensive homes which is why the stovetops at Best Buy are the "premium" models.
Also, at least in the US people have been told over and over how a kitchen remodel actually adds value to your house. "Every dollar you spend you get a dollar twenty back!" Well maybe so or maybe not, but if you don't sell your house before you need to remodel again, you are never realizing that gain.
Interestingly, this is more or less the opposite to Europe these days. While integrated stove/ovens are somewhat rare now, they tend to exist almost exclusively on the high end; a bog-standard cheapest-possible installation will be a separate halogen or induction (or gas) stovetop and a single oven.
You never see the naked coils anymore; as far as I know they're not available anymore (though I'm not sure _why_; they were definitely a thing when I was a kid, but I haven't seen one in about 25 years). The very cheapest units are often those solid plate resistive heater things, but the price difference between those and halogen/ceramic units is very small (about 50 euro on the low end) and the running costs are higher; you don't see them much anymore.
Product segmentation I guess. One is competing with microwaves and other loose utilities, the other is installed as part of a kitchen outfitting which is expected to be expensive.
I'm sure it is at least partially just what you can get away with charging.
Single burners are common for students and people with little room for anything larger, often very budget constrained.
Cooktops are often being put in as a part of an already expensive kitchen refit/build.
With that said, I'm sure there are other factors. Built-in hobs tend to need to be a lot thinner to fit in the available space, at least from what I have seen.
The professional machines don’t look nice, don’t have fancy buttons or electronics. They are not fashion items for fancy looking kitchens.
Instead, They are practical. They have insane power (4.5kW is low range… and it goes directly into the pan…). They are easy to clean, and they have physical knobs: one for on/off, and a dial for power, which they display in a cheap display in kWs.
ebay (buy new directly from the brand). Restaurants open and close, and that stuff needs to often go somewhere else, up to the point that many of these brands sell their new equipment on ebay dirctly via their own shop.
In the US you can't order a Bosch induction top off Amazon. The cheapest 4 field Bosch induction cooktop at Home Depot, Lowe's and Best Buy (stores people frequently buy appliances at in the US) is $1700.
This is really interesting. I was reading the thread waiting to find a hard, technical reason for the cost difference. Instead, this really seems to be an opportunity for disrupting the US market. I wonder if someone could make some good money for a while importing Bosch stove tops. Your margin blah blah blah..
