Induction can also boil water much faster than gas ever could. And to be honest, as much hate as they get, I would even prefer non-induction electric over gas at this point.

It took decades of propaganda. Paying off cooking shows and influencers to have big, obvious gas stoves. They even popularized the phrase “cooking with gas” as a euphemism for anything fast. If it was so much better, it would have sold its self.

But people (conservatives) will claim it’s superior in some way or another in order to be a contrarian.

no, that's not the reason. induction stoves are really only around for a couple years, IIRC, and old electric stoves simply weren't that great. they were mostly slow. gas, you turned on and had heat. electric meant that you had to wait for the glass pane to heat up below your cooking gear. on top of that, gas was typically cheaper than electric.

that's really only changing now, where renewable energy provides cheap electricity, while gas prices are increasing due to international situation. it simply takes a while for the news to spread, and not everybody has gotten the news yet. renewable energy will be much cheaper than gas in the long run, thanks to solar energy, and that's a news that really only started being economically meaningful around 2 years ago. It simply takes a long time for the news to go around and everybody hear it.

No, we don't force anyone to do anything, electric replacements are offered as a "free" upgrade. We're a housing cooperative, so technically it's not free, but it's paid for by the community's collective funds.

The other main problem is that people routinely forget to turn off their stoves. We've had the fire department come multiple times this year alone because someone left their gas on and filled their unit with it. One resident left his gas open for who knows how long before he passed out in his living room and shit himself. Luckily someone found him and called the paramedics.

I guess if it was one person living in the wilderness and they blew themselves up or suffocated, then that's on them. In a community though, it endangers everyone nearby.

Gas is not safe.

I monitored my indoor air quality prior to getting rid of my gas stove and even with windows open, the levels of the monitored pollutants skyrocket when the stove or oven was going. Maybe if you had a box fan blowing in/out for a long time after you finish you’d be ok, but that’s not ideal if you’re heating/cooling your place.

I understand that, I've lived with gas ovens most of the time as well. Interestingly, the studio I just moved into (which is freshly converted from a garage) has a new fridge and an electric flat-top range. But I rent from a lone guy, not from a standardized apartment community. So maybe that's why he invested in the good stuff. Renovating an entire complex is way pricier than setting up a single apartment.

I also think I just got lucky. It's not a perfect place - the insulation sucks, there are paint flecks on the floor and kitchen cabinets, the shower hot/cold are backwards (which confused the hell out of me at first. I thought my hot water wasn't working) and I saw a mouse recently. But I can't complain, because the landlord is responsive and the good appliances help balance out the negatives.

And there was huge pushback a couple years ago when a few places wanted to change that - new construction must be electric only. While I can see builders like to be cheap, anything moderately expensive should be able to get heat pumps and induction at no real cost difference to gas

Switching can be expensive, but doing the right thing on construction much less so. We now have a bunch of new infrastructure/technology we’ll expect our future houses to have, and it’s past time we started doing so on new construction, where it’s much cheaper than converting