Tesla is pulling back on the privilege of unlimited free charging it had extended to its customers since 2012. New Tesla car owners will not have the opportunity to pull into the company's supercharging stations to juice up their batteries. However, the restriction is only for cars ordered after January 1 or delivered after April 1, 2017.

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Tesla supercharging stations are situated along highways. These stations serve long-distance travels and offer fast charging. A supercharging station can deliver nearly 170 mile worth of charging in 30 minutes. Regular charging stations take more than two hours for the same amount of charging.

Owners who do not meet the above deadline will still get an allowance of 400 kWh of free supercharging credits per year. However, after that, they will have to pay a small fee to use the supercharging stations. The company has not revealed the fee that will be charged but said that it will be cheaper than buying gas.

Tesla said that its supercharging stations are never going to result in profits. However, the small fee will help the company to further develop the network. The company currently has 734 supercharging stations which house 4,605 high-speed chargers. US, Europe, and China account for the major chunk of these stations. 

The company has been dealing with the issues such as customers using supercharging stations instead of charging the cars at their home. Charging a small fee may help the car company to better manage its facilities and reduce the load on its chargers.