Inside the Contractor Behind Tesla, IONNA and EVgo Charging Hubs

Building an EV charging site takes far more than a hardware brand and a software platform. Behind many of the large-scale rollouts from Tesla, IONNA, EVgo and Electrify America sits a general contractor that handles the civil work, electrical installation and increasingly the whole customer experience around a charging bay. One of the most active players in that layer is Kansas-based Osborne, a commercial construction firm that has been in business since 1976 and in the EV space for roughly a decade.

According to CEO Stephen Osborne, the company has completed around a thousand charging locations over the past ten years, starting with early Tesla and Electrify America sites. He says the pace of change has accelerated dramatically: the last year and a half has brought more shifts than the previous seven or eight years combined. Among the most consequential, he points to rising charging speeds, battery backup systems, and the slow untangling of charge-port compatibility across vehicles, which had been a persistent headache for drivers and operators alike.

Efficiency is another front where Osborne sees real money at stake. When a charge point operator buys energy and loses a fifth of it inside legacy equipment, that is revenue walking out the door. Newer systems, he notes, are reporting efficiency figures as high as 98%, a meaningful improvement for operators running thin margins.

Site design is changing too. Osborne describes one Georgia installation with a dozen chargers that sprawled across nearly an acre because the equipment was scattered. With today’s all-in-one charging systems, a comparable site could fit into roughly 2,000 square feet. That compression lets developers place hubs in tighter, more creative locations and reduces underground copper, which lowers both installation complexity and cost. It also means fewer paid parking stalls get sacrificed to charging equipment.

Osborne’s client list reads like a who’s who of the charging industry: Tesla, Electrify America, EVgo, IONNA, Francis Energy and ABB, with the firm acting as preferred contractor for several of them. The company targets enterprise clients running large multi-site programs, typically aiming to win 30% to 50% of a hundred-project pipeline. Its work is not limited to passenger vehicles — it recently energized a bus charging depot for the Transit Authority of River City in the Louisville, Kentucky area, stabilizing a century-old building rather than demolishing it and installing ChargePoint hardware in the renovated space.

The firm’s pitch is vertical integration. Osborne argues that operators who hire only a local electrician still need a general contractor for the civil scope, which often leads to finger-pointing, change orders and delays when problems arise. Osborne is licensed across the US and positions itself as a one-stop shop. With IONNA, that has extended into convenience store build-outs — Osborne’s crews handle the electrical work, site preparation and the retail space itself, turning a charging stop into a fuller roadside experience. Amenities like restrooms, coffee, dog parks and room to stretch are becoming a bigger draw, and Osborne expects that trend to keep growing.

Field experience matters in the details. Osborne says it sends staff who have built sites before to walk a location and spot savings — sometimes as simple as shifting one parking stall to a different aisle to cut costs significantly.

The process usually starts before Osborne is involved. Operators or their in-house site developers scout locations with site hosts, commission feasibility studies through engineering firms, and work through due diligence on power availability and cost. In at least one case, Osborne recalls, a promising site turned out to have no power in the area at all, a reminder that the grid — not the charger — often sets the timetable for a new hub.

As charging networks race to scale, that unglamorous construction layer will determine how quickly new hubs actually open. With all-in-one hardware shrinking footprints and convenience retail expanding on-site, the companies that can deliver both civil work and customer-facing amenities may have an edge in winning the next wave of build-outs.