Engineering · 2017–2018 · Delivered

How do you show a driver something they can't see?

Wireless EV charging demonstrators

Wireless charging demonstrators that used the shape of a pedestal and its lighting to guide alignment and show charging progress.

Fig. 1 — The wireless charging wallbox from iteration to object, 2017–18. Outline traced from Dominic's render; render and photograph of the lit prototype are his. Ford pre-production design work; employer clearance pending.

Role: Design lead, team of three
Years: 2017–2018
Project status: Delivered
Organisation: Ford Motor Company
Categories: Engineering
Sources: I02, S15, S16

Demonstrator requirements and design integration: Delivered 2017–18
Physical prototypes: Full-size mock-ups Oct 2017; two brand variants built and lit, Jan–Feb 2018
Public demonstration: Shown (per CV; date and venue pending)
Production feature: Not a product

04Situation

Removing the charging cable creates a new problem: how does a driver line up with a pad under the car and know that charging has started? In 2017, I led the physical design of Ford's wireless-charging pedestal, lighting, and indicators. The power-transfer engineering was handled by other groups; my work was to make the interaction understandable. ^[I02]^[S15]

The constraints were already decided by the electronics: a boxed power supply with a cable and ventilation, and a square inductive pad with its own supply cable. Everything else was open. The board I put in front of the charging-systems leads in April 2017 set a direction I called Modern Americana — the vintage gas pump, a Lincoln interior and the GT pit lane as references, and the Tesla Supercharger as the thing to be measured against. ^[S16]

Held — available to reviewers · Fig. 2 — The brief on one board, 21 April 2017: mood row, the two fixed constraints, two pedestal directions and the floor coil cover.

05Work

The pedestal had no screen, so its light had to do three jobs: guide the car onto the pad, show that it was aligned, and show the state of charge. The gradient came first, in April 2017, as a Photoshop file and a colour table. In November 2017 I wrote the animation states in Arduino with the FastLED library, reading the vehicle's displayed state of charge from the CAN bus: ^[S16]

Drive-up — fade on; vertical bars fill as the car gets closer; a slow landing pulse over the dim top region.
Aligned — change to green, double blink, then the bar drains top-down.
Charging — state of charge shown on the gradient, driven by the live signal.
Drive-away — on disconnect, fade down like a gas pump draining.
Fault — a yellow "put in park" warning, blinking like a forklift.

Vertical colour gradient from red through amber to green, used as the charge-state scale — Fig. 3 — The state-of-charge gradient, April 2017; the same ramp was tabulated as RGB values for the LED code. Own file.

Chrome Ford script badge rendered on a dark ground — Fig. 4 — Chrome badge study for the pedestal face. Own file.

By October 2017 the pedestal existed at full size: a soft-edged column with a flared base and a recess on the front face where the wall-box charger mounts. Three were built in grey primer at the model shop. Ten days later Ford Design rendered the same architecture with Ford and Lincoln wall boxes, the charging pad and the LED charge gradient. ^[S16]

Held — available to reviewers · Fig. 5 — Three pedestals in a row, 2 October 2017.

Held — available to reviewers · Fig. 6 — The same moment, wider.

Held — available to reviewers · Fig. 7 — Side view, with a louvered variant behind.

Held — available to reviewers · Fig. 8 — Ford Design concept board, 12 October 2017.

The wall unit is where the driver's eye lands, and it went through the loop the hero shows. A first white shell sat on the grey tower by the start of November 2017. I marked it up rather than redrawing it: where the break line between shell and base should move, where the ventilation needed to go and whether its pattern could be back-lit, an access cover with the on/off, a cable exit, and lighting along the borders so the state reads from across a garage. From that came the form that stuck — a shell narrowing toward the floor, a dark lower body carrying the brand and the status light, two light pipes running the height of the unit — rendered in the two brands' languages: a white Ford unit with a hexagonal grille and an amber line, a dark Lincoln unit with a brick-pattern top and a blue line.

A printed concept rendering of a white wall-mounted charger with a FORD mark, annotated by hand in pencil: notes point to the ventilation pattern, the break line, an access cover with on/off, lighting borders and a cable exit — Fig. 9 — Annotated concept sketch of the wall unit, November 2017. Dominic Gelfuso. The notes are the brief for the next iteration.

Two hand-sized early models of the wall unit on a desk, one white with a dark base and one grey, each with a sticky note — Fig. 10 — Early form models, November 2017. Dominic Gelfuso. The sticky notes are review comments.

Colour rendering of a dark metallic wall-mounted charger with a blue light line around its face and a LINCOLN WIRELESS mark on the black lower body — Fig. 11 — Lincoln variant, colour render, November 2017. Dominic Gelfuso. The hero's outline is traced from this camera.

Colour rendering of a white wall-mounted charger with a hexagonal grille, an amber light line and a FORD WIRELESS mark on the black lower body — Fig. 12 — Ford variant, colour render, November 2017. Dominic Gelfuso.

Two hands hold up two wall-mounted chargers from other makers, one glossy black and one grey-white, for comparison — Fig. 13 — Two production wall chargers from other makers held up against the team's units, December 2017. Dominic Gelfuso.

The white Ford unit and the silver Lincoln unit side by side on a cloth-covered bench, both with the black lower body — Fig. 14 — The Ford and Lincoln units as built, January 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. One form, two surface languages.

Fig. 15 — The Ford unit lit, January 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. The pipes carry the state — here, aligned and charging — and the logo plate is the completion light. Signed by the team.

A workshop bay with the dark backing tower and wall unit at the far end, a floor pad set into the concrete in front of it, two poster boards on stands and the earlier units on a folding table — Fig. 16 — The demonstrator bay set up for review, January 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. Wall unit, floor pad, explanatory boards; earlier units on the table.

A vehicle raised on a two-post lift above the floor pad, with the wall unit on its tower behind and shipping crates stacked along the wall — Fig. 17 — Vehicle on the lift over the pad, January 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. The receiver under the car and the pad in the floor are the parts a driver never sees.

The silver Lincoln unit on a cloth-covered bench, top down, showing the brick-pattern texture of the upper shell and the LINCOLN WIRELESS mark on the black lower body — Fig. 18 — The Lincoln unit finished, February 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. The brick-pattern top from the render, realised.

By June 2018 the pedestal, coil cover and inverter cover existed as printable solids; my print notes asked for high-detail resin parts, a port big enough to slide an Arduino inside, and embossed light channels on the inverter so the light pipe could be masked before paint. ^[S16]

06Decision

The demonstrator needed people to understand alignment, power flow, and completion as they walked around it. That shaped how much the lighting showed and how far away it could be read. We were designing an exhibit, so the indicators made the process more visible than a production unit might need.

07Status

The CV records two public demonstrators in 2017–18, built by a team of three in which I was design lead: the charging hardware and its indicators integrated into a vehicle and a floor pad that visitors could walk around. ^[I02] The record now runs from the April 2017 board to finished, lit units in two brand languages by February 2018; the show dates and venue are still to be confirmed, and no outcome for the programme is recorded. This was exploratory work, distinct from the Mach-E charging products that followed, and it did not ship as a feature. The interaction thinking — light as the whole interface, alignment before charge, a fade that reads like a gauge — carried into the Connected Charge Station two years later, whose status light and back-lit mark sit on the cover of the main box. ^[S16]

08A model for the desk

The same object at a tenth the scale: a 3D-printed tower and pad with a Qi coil in the pad, wired to a bench supply, that charges a phone set on it. It was made for the fun of it, and it turned out to be the most useful explainer we had — the whole system in two hands, with the invisible part doing something you could watch.

A small white 3D-printed tower with a round black charging pad in a white tray in front of it, on a workbench beside a power supply and soldering station — Fig. 19 — The desk-scale model on the bench, undated (2017–18). Dominic Gelfuso.

A hand holds a small white tray containing a round coil assembly with a spiral copper winding, wired to a circuit board — Fig. 20 — The Qi coil in the pad, undated (2017–18). Dominic Gelfuso.

References & documentation

1. I02
`01 CV - Gelfuso.pdf` and revised CVs, Oct 2026 — Dates, roles, projects, publication statements; reconcile conflicting older versionsfirst-party
No, owner-supplied CV
2. S15
RPI Every Day Matters — Rensselaer Graduate Named to Ford's 30 Under 30 — Independent university coverage of Dominic's selection for the 2018 Ford Thirty Under 30 fellowship; linked the (now unavailable) application video
Covers selection, not the First Step project outcome; the video it linked was the Swersey tribute, not the team recap. Added 2026-10-23 from Dominic's archive search.
3. S16
Personal archive — Ford charging work 2017–2020 (photo albums, sketch sheets, emails, Drive renders), catalogued in the Portfolio Source Pack sections 10–12 — Dated photographs and files for the wireless pedestal (Apr 2017–Jun 2018), the charge-coupler redesign (Apr 2019–Jun 2020), cordset and wallbox renders (2019) and the Mach-E launch year; records-dossier Addendum 5 lists dates and thread idsfirst-party
Private archive; third-party items (Ford Design, Roush, Product Insight, supplier documents) are gated or held pending clearance; supplier commercial figures and internal email text are not published