I noticed these solar-powered parking meters sneak into my San Francisco neighborhood, Hayes Valley, on a busy street lined with design shops, cafes and restaurants. The Civic Center area tends to be a hotbed for green experimentation, and it was great to see innovation that adds value while being good to the environment.
This parking meter finally takes credit cards as well as coins (save those precious quarters for your laundry), and LEDs facing the street indicate whether you've overstayed your welcome. The "more" and "less" buttons apparently allow you to allocate your intended stay.
My dream feature: if lunch is going a little overtime, it simply draws more funds from your credit card, a "pay as you go" model to make city parking a little more stress-free.
