[lafar6503]

Electricity meters have been known for decades, even with payment terminals.after all, they were invented to bill customers for electricity used. And I can see authors point - if you look at Tesla chargers, it's not only the stalls but whole underground infrastructure with cooling, air conditioners and who knows what else. If cars were designed to use AC instead it would be enough to have an AC outlet (3 phase probably) and a meter, and whole charging station could be built by an electrician, with standard components. Yep you won't get a megawatt power this way, but 30-50kW is realistic

[stetrain]

So the power meter dutifully ticks up the charge you have used while plugged in. Then what? How do you pay it? Do you have to go track down some person who may or may not be on duty to read the meter, hope they read it before you started, and pay them in quarters?

Cars are designed to use AC. That's how all current Level 2 chargers work. They are basically dumb outlets plus a contractor, GFCI, and optionally a payment terminal. But beyond a certain level (around 20kW) the size and cost of putting a larger AC to DC converter in the car is prohibitive.

At one point Tesla Superchargers were literally racks of the same AC to DC converters found in the car, but fed with 3-phase power, bussed together, and cooled all external to the car. There's no other way to implement a reliable 20-minute roadtrip charge.

[lafar6503]

Oh come on, pay for use is a solved problem. Look at gas pumps. But if it's not feasible to have a big DC converter in every car then no luck

[vel0city]

Yeah but even adding a credit card terminal massively increases the complexity compared to the plain plug the author is talking about here. If you're going to have to include relays and ground fault equipment and payment systems you're 95% of the way to a "complicated" EVSE.

[frankus]

There's actually a clever way to reconfigure the inverter electronics and (induction) motor to essentially do "regenerative braking" off of a 3-phase supply (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5341075A/en).

I'm not sure if this is so widely used as to not be worth mentioning, or if there are hidden gotchas or patent encumbrances that keep it from being widely used.