Reliable, repeatable, the coffee is not super duper excellent, but it's also not terrible. It's perfectly passable and it's free. My type of coffee.
It's kind of unavoidable that it's going to be expensive and higher-maintenance to be able to make espresso at home, so I simply don't. Not worth it for me when I already have access to high-end espresso machines at work 5 days a week.
If you have an office where the machine makes 100+ coffees it makes perfect sense. In a domestic setup it makes 0 sense.
I cannot imagine a home without a kettle, its the first appliance I bought when I moved countries. I also cannot abide by a kettle less than 3Kw anymore either.
But no one is putting in 240V circuits for countertop plug-in appliances afaik, even though there's absolutely no reason you can't do so.
And by the way, electric kettle are quite common in the US amongst the tea or fancy coffee drinking set.