Wal Mart and Electrify America
 

Went to Wal Mart yesterday for boat-tail materials.
A dozen, Electrify America, 35-kW, Chademo Plug-in, and BEV charging stations had materialized in the center of the parking lot.
Across the street, to the east lay the TESLA Supercharger station.
And a neighbor with dual citizenship, both at Whitehawk and Denton claims that Denton is heavy into renewables now, a good thing the way I see it.:)

Are they coin-operated, or are they giving it away?

coin-operated?
 

All I could discern was card-readers, as if they'd take a major credit/debit card, or 'member' card, maybe read the screen of a smartphone. They also listed a phone number one could access for over- the- phone assistance if need be.
I don't have a PHEV or BEV yet, so I may have witnessed something that didn't 'register' in my uninitiated brain.
Hope to be 'initiated' soon!
PS a number of Months ago, Cinemark Theater also added ' free, two-hour charging' for patrons.

I never used an Electrify America charger when I had my EV but they are suppose to have card readers. That would be HUGE because most charging companies make you set up an account, fund it with $10-$20 minimum and then use an app. Just swiping a card would be much less hassle.

Hopefully those new chargers have CCS plugs as well as the obsolete Chademo plug.

That's a good point about plug variations. If the industry doesn't agree on a design (or the government regulate a design), it could be quite an obstacle for consumers.

I.E., can you imagine if liquid-fuel cars came with exact-fit-required gas tank ports that employed various shapes depending on the makers' proprietary designs: round, square, rectangle, star, etc.?

Try owning a VW TDI wth their stupid filler insert and not spilling fuel.

The USA does have a standard plug as adopted by the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) It is the Combined Charging System Type 2 (CCS) plug. Only 2 manufacturers refuse to use this standard plug - Tesla and Nissan.

Tesla uses their own plug in the USA but switched to CCS in Europe
Nissan continues to use Chademo

Tesla can use CCS too with an adapter, if my understanding is correct. Only reason why we have Chademo is because Nissan was first to the market, with the Japanese standard.

Tesla sells a CCS adapter in Europe but not in the USA. They only sell a Chademo and J1772 adapter in North America.

My wife gets unlimited charging with ChargePoint through a deal with her employer. It's only $4/mo but we hardly ever use it because the Leaf is our around-town car. If we had something with longer range, that might be a different story.

The Walmarts here have a few chargers on the lots but I haven't seen anybody use one. Last time we checked, they weren't free