Hey man, that's not true! I can go into the laundry room, unplug my dryer, and plug in a 220V kettle with a special adapter, or go out in the garage and unplug the table saw. Convenient options!

I have to believe it’s also the popularity. Maybe it’s too much my own experience but:

• most people drink coffee
• tea drinkers historically didn’t have a high end

Maybe I’m not sure how to phrase it but in my lifetime, coffee went from hideous burnt crap to something where we care about a high end. Coffee in general has gotten much better, there are way more choices, and there is a visible niche of people who spend way too much time and money looking for the perfect brew.

In the US, tea is following this path, but much later. Most of my life tea drinkers may have argue over the best brand of tea bags, but it was the same old swill their Moms may have used (they may disagree with that characterization). It’s only much more recently that tea in the US has become a “thing” something people pay attention to, something with a “high end”. At the grocery, tea choices are not as wide as coffee, but now you have a much greater variety of brands, sources, flavors, preparation methods. Tea is only in recent years enough of a “thing” to get excited over, pay too much time and attention to.

Or in my house, I don’t understand my teenagers and their weird tea drinking ways, when I have three different ways of making coffee. However this kettle thing is great for hot chocolate and caffe mocha

Plus they were boring and plain, who wants that in a kitchen. Now we have glass and chrome, cool electronics, blue LEDs, phone apps

That demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of how electricity works.

Voltage is only half the power equation. The other half is current. Power = voltage x current

So if a kettle on 110V can draw twice the current, it will have exactly the same amount of power and will heat the water in exactly the same amount of time as a kettle on 220V that draws half the current.

Oooh. That actually makes a lot of sense.