They’ve got a quite unusual stove that’s got a large battery in it so that it can operate when the power is off, and doesn’t need the installation of a 240v power connection. This avoids the cost of an electrical retrofit of old apartment buildings, which otherwise costs far more.
If you’ve already got your home wired for 240v, you can get an induction stove for far less.
These battery-equipped stoves are expensive right now because they’re being made in quite small numbers. The parts needed are coming down in price quite rapidly, so I expect to see them sold in the $2000/unit price range within a few years.
Why anyone ever bought a gas stove is the real mystery.
Resistance electric burners really are shit. If you’ve never cooked on one, it’s hard to express just how much a game changer induction is. Not to mention people’s legacy of copper, stainless, and aluminium cookware.
I mean, 70 years ago, maybe this still made sense. But in the present?
Electric resistance or infrared simply doesn’t have the response time. Plus many of them don’t actually have “medium” but just do on/off at 50% duty cycle (I can’t remember what that’s called) so there’s absolutely no nuance to them. Many of the induction stoves share this problem with the added complexity of delicate circuitry.
There’s a lot of talk about air quality with gas stoves and I am not going to downplay that, because electric isn’t a magic switch - most people don’t have adequate ventilation to keep the VOC and PM levels in check when cooking on an electric stove let alone gas.
I bought a gas stove 2 years ago and replaced electric. I did it because I needed to free up the circuit for other things and it was cheaper to replace the stove than get a upgraded panel. I ran the gas line myself but I won’t do a electrical upgrade myself. I have automatic exhaust when the stove turns on so its not much of a deal.
That’s why NYC is using induction stoves with batteries that can trickle charge over a day