12v Water Kettle okay?

Don't have an answer for you.
But actually, I'd love to find a long stretch where there is no Starbucks in sight. Where I live, there seems to be one about every 4 blocks.

 

I think just keep the car the car in "ready" mode (on, engine starting/stopping as needed). And if the fuse doesn't blow the first time, you're probable fine, lol. Check the amperage of your kettle: from the owner's manual:

 

Why not try a portable inverter?

 

Why not a thermos?

 

This is not a Prius-specific issue, it is a 'cigarette lighter' socket capacity issue.

Are there any such water boilers that consume 120 watts or less? If not, you are out of luck.

If you use units rated over 120 watts, you are overloading the outlet. Some cars might have special 'hardend' or 'heat resistant' sockets that can handle more power, but Prius does not.

This does not fix the 12V socket capacity issue. It would need a direct connection to the 12V battery, not using the 12V outlet.

 

I tried a 12 volt Road Pro water boiler, but sent it back to Amazon because it took 30 to 45 minutes to boil 16 oz of water. I then bought a 12 volt water heating coil that you drop into a cup. It works great, boiling water in about 4 minutes. Cost about $10. But recently I parked a 750-watt inverter under the hood and ran a 110-volt cord into the cabin, installed an outlet and now plug in and use a 600-watt Bella 1 cup coffee maker every day. It makes a 14 oz cup of coffee in 1 minute. It cost about $15.00. I can post pictures if there is any interest.

 

"New Prius burned up by driver making coffee".
Obviously because it's a hybrid. Those things are dangerous.

 

It's a pretty different suggestion than the others here but I'd recommend you buy a jetboil. They boil about 24oz of water in 3 min. While they are on the pricy side compared to everything mentioned here, and you absolutely shouldn't ever under any circumstances use it in the car for risk of CO poisoning, it'll last forever and lets you cook meals and make drinks on the road. I love mine for road trips. Just pull over for 5 min and you've got plenty of hot water. Or if you're hungry you can make pasta or boxed mac and cheese or any sort of dehydrated soup.


iPhone ?

 

As per Fuzzy1, the boiling water is probably fairly high power use, so you would probably need to go to the Inverter hooked to the 12v battery. I have a smaller 400w Bestek unit from Amazon. You need to check watt draw of the appliance. I'd be a little worried about the safety inside the car as far as hot scalding water.

 

There is no danger in my setup. It's mostly like the setup in every long-haul truck out there, although truckers may use very larger inverters or even several smaller ones hooked to monster sized 12 volt batteries.

My inverter is properly fused, and it runs off of the 12 volt battery, just like in any other car. It's not hooked to the traction battery/motor side of the electrical system. So no danger there. It takes into account the issues that typically result in failure with inverter use, that is, overloading the 12 volt side. It is just as safe as using the accessory plugs for charging a phone or running a crash cam.

Being snuggled up next to the 12 volt battery, there is zero voltage overload on the 12 volt side of my set up. Usually, you hear about melted wires with 12 volt inverters due to overloading where they plug into the accessory/lighter port. I have my inverter hooked to the battery with about 8 inches of #4 stranded copper wire using commercial lugs. The 110 volt cord is a #12 stranded copper only 4 feet long hooked to a 20 amp snap-in outlet. Both cords are overrated for their use in this context. There would be zero voltage drop on the 110-volt side even if I were to use a 15-foot extension cord to move power outside of the cabin or to the back of the car. And I am careful to stay within the 750-watt continuous/1500-watt peak load of the inverter. I would never, for instance, try to run a microwave oven. Even if I did, it would just blow a fuse.

For convenience, I moved (in parallel) the inverter switch control on the face of the inverter into the cabin, along with the LED indicator light. That means I can turn the inverter on and off from its front panel or from inside the cabin, which eliminates any patristic draw from the inverter that might drain the 12 volt battery when the car is not in operation and the inverter is not under load (nothing is plugged in). There is little fear of draining the battery even if the inverter is left on with no load, because I know that the constant load from the inverter (the patristic load) is so small as not to completely drain the accessory battery over even many days of non-use of the car.

So, what do I do with the setup? Coffee and/or hot water using this 110 volt/600 amp 14 oz. coffee maker with steel mesh filter basket (although I use a trimmed down paper filters to make it a no-rinse cleanup for coffee. It fits snugly between the seats over the cup holders, or you can use it on the passenger side floor (it's easy to tip over, down there).


And I just got this gem for soup and other heat and serve things. I think I paid about $20 for it. It only draws 110 volts/50 watts and 20 oz. of soup is ready in about 30 minutes (most crock pots are very low wattage). The nice thing here is that it is great for quality canned soup. If I want a cup of noodles I use the coffee maker to heat water as it is quicker.



On the 12 volt side, I use this:


It's bit cheaply made (handle broke, latch broke, wire and plug seem substandard), but it works great. If I am camping, I pre-package and freeze meals in foil lined steel bread pans from Walmart (88 cents each) that I cut the "end wings" off so they would fit. Pop one out of the cooler, plug into the accessory port on the car and meal is ready in about an hour. Great when returning from a day hike! Turn on the car, get my meal started in this, get my coffee going and I am "the king of the world!"

 

Anything over 120 watts input and you need to connect directly to the battery or risk a meltdown, blown fuse in the car, or inverter failure. That's probably about a 300-watt inverter.

I like the Bestek 1000-watt model at $80 on Amazon, specifically because it has a circuit to shut itself down if the source battery gets low. I may replace my Harbor Freight ($37) 700-watt inverter with this one just for that reason. An external switch to do the same thing costs nearly $100.

Always check the wattage draw of the appliance. It is good practice to measure the inrush draw at home before plugging into an inverter. And be cautious with sophisticated equipment that requires a pure sine wave. Cheap inverters are all square wave. For instance, Kerig coffee pots seem to require pure sine wave power as I tried several and could not get them to work even though the wattage was well within my 700-watt inverter.

 

Geesh....all this for coffee on the road?
I'm still saying...fill a thermos-2 maybe..a large one... up for the "dust bowl"...."The Hills Have Eyes" stretch of the drive.
And the rest of the time...you're traveling in the USA. Finding coffee shouldn't be that big of challenge.

Jumping through a lot of hoops....just to boil water in your car.

PS.
If you're thinking long term for camping?
That's different.

 

Camping.

Day hikes.

Overnight trips having to put up with a 450 mile range (that's 6+ hours of driving before I stop at the gas station).

And ... I could make tea ...