Coin Operated electricity meters

[MIPS]

Every EV charger I've seen seems to be a mix of vendor lock-in (Tesla) or you need to have an account linked to a financial institution or credit plan before it will allow you to use it.
It would be nice to just pull up, prepay and plug-in but but the paranoid side leads me to believe they want you to sign up for an account specifically because they need to make you pay for the energy you use, plus they want your aggregate account information for marketing value.

[Colly0410]

When I was a kid in the 1960's here in England my parents had prepayment coin meters for the electric, gas & TV: the electric & gas meters took 1 shilling/5 pence coins, & the rented TV a 2 shilling/10 pence coin. Later in the 70's the electric & gas meters were changed to 50 pence coins & my parents bought outright a Sony colour TV so no more meter to feed. Most working class/not rich people then had prepayment meters, my parents did till the late 70's when they changed over to normal meters. When I rented a house in 1992 it had a card electric prepayment meter, you could buy 1 pound cards at certain stores/post offices & you'd get 1 pounds worth of electricity, we'd use abut 5 or 6 cards a week. I now pay for electric & gas by monthly direct debit, but those across the footpath from us still have a prepayment card electric meter...

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Do those charging stations for electric cars have credit card access, just like the parking meters have?
I'm guilty of living in the past!

According to MIPs. I think you can get a home charger, find a normal outlet and steal electricity if so inclined.

I like the past better and do my best to live there too....I swear if I had a time machine I'd be solid gone, and there'd be a number of prominent politicians that never got born because I found ways of keeping their parents from meeting each other...

I have zero interest in owning an electric car....Now if Chevy (or Cadillac in their equivalent vehicle) had a plug in hybrid suburban with an LS V8 and it was out long enough to get it reasonable used I'd look for one(at 60k+ for a new base suburban and 100k for the cadillac version I rather use that money to make a down payment on a house, and will sooner buy used and fix it myself).

Supposedly a lot of the electrics you can use to power your whole house in an emergency...I wouldn't do that with a full electric as having the ability to drive out is important if things don't get fixed, but I would do that with a hybrid.

I kinda wonder if the house chargers on the full electrics would let you charge off a portable gas generator as you drive....The only way I could be sold on a full electric is if it could do that with a generator strapped to the roof for unlimited range. I got better things to do on road trips than sit at charging stations....Hell there's some routes you can't even take because there isn't charging.

[MIPS]

According to MIPS. I think you can get a home charger, find a normal outlet and steal electricity if so inclined.

Yep. Home EV chargers are a thing and strongly recommended. Most cars come with a 120v cable that is fine on a 15A circuit but they are glacially slow. The recommendation is run a 30A 230v circuit to your garage and purchase a high-capacity charger than can fully charge in about 8-12 hours.
When I have a friend visit with his car I let him use his 120v 20A charger in the outlet we have for the roof de-icers.

The caveat is you aren't paying at a pump anymore. You just have to imagine you left the oven on all night.

[vortalexfan]

This pre-pay electric meter sounds kind of like the old coin-op fans that GE made back in the early 1900s where you had to insert a nickel and the fan would run for about an hour per nickel, also the old coin-op radios and TVs that they used in motels back in the day as well.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Every EV charger I've seen seems to be a mix of vendor lock-in (Tesla) or you need to have an account linked to a financial institution or credit plan before it will allow you to use it.
It would be nice to just pull up, prepay and plug-in but but the paranoid side leads me to believe they want you to sign up for an account specifically because they need to make you pay for the energy you use, plus they want your aggregate account information for marketing value.

I still believe in carrying my fuel supply with me. I owned two Prius' and it's a proven design. I the city, where the speed limit is a maximum of 35MPH, it can get 55 to 60 MPG. That's economical enough for me!
Power from the grid isn't so cheap either!

[MIPS]

Alright, lets try a test.


So in theory the field coil is rated for 220v, not 120 (or 115, or 110 or whatever) and it's wound for 50hz power. My prediction is that it will be a slowdown of 0.55:1/10 KwH which would be almost useless.

No I was wrong. I lined up the 1/10 dial to .3, applied a load and it was only off by about 0.01KwH by the time it landed on .4 KwH.





This is fine. It's not going to be spot-on accurate but that's close enough to let you have fun with it.