I think it would work fine. Parking meters exist for a reason - a lot of people park their cars on the street and go do whatever they came to do. You could upgrade the meters to also support payment for charging.
Installing roadside charging points is the only approach that I can see working for inner cities - maybe create "charging only" zones where you can only park and charge cars - parking a normal car there getting a ticket.
NB I live in central Edinburgh in a flat and there is no way we could have an electric car without some changes to the parking/charging infrastructure.
