Simple Dual Wireless Qi Charger for Tesla Model 3 by jjlionberger

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

One thing that seems to be missing from the Tesla Model 3 is a Wireless charger. There are many aftermarket options out there, but some require running wires behind trim and modifying parts of the car. I had bought several QI Wireless charger pads to try on this project and many didn't work due to the limited power of the USB ports in the Model 3. For some reason, the Energy Pad https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075Q97P9T/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 seemed to work using the Model 3 ports with no modification. I tested on a Galaxy Note 5 and also a Galaxy S8 and both worked very well.
Since I had determined the wireless part to use, I tried tape and a few other things as suggested, but didn't like any of the solutions so I made a real simple pad or spacer with holes, wire cutouts on the back and round pegs to hold in place. This could be made from PLA, or other material, but I decided to use TPU. It was about at the limit of my printer and TPU prints much slower so it took a while, but other than a few areas that you can see in the pics where I had a feed problem, it turned out almost perfect. The pads fit very nice in the hole to bring everything up to the same level and the wire is hidden on the back side. Tape can be used to hold the pads in the holes during installation if loose, but mine fit just tight enough to hold them while I slid the pad into place. I didn't care about the look too much since I had planned to use a thin mat I had gotten from a home store that you put in the bottom of toolbox drawers to cushion and keep things from sliding around. This mat was just cut to size and hides any imperfections in the print,
The Dual pad holes are slightly offset to the center and set to a height that seemed to be optimal for the galaxy phones. I would hope that this would be true for other devices. I have been using this for a week now and works great. The reviews on the Energy pad chargers have not been great, but so far they have worked fine for me. Total project cost for the pads and material was less than $50 and is now the only vehicle I have with a builtin wireless charger. Is is so nice to just set my phone down when I get in and not have to worry about plugging it in.