It’s now been documented that, in at least a few cases, a LEAF’s onboard charger has been damaged after charging with a WattStation, but the cause of the problem is not yet clear.

GE and Nissan are scrambling to figure out a problem involving GE’s popular WattStation charger and Nissan’s LEAF. It’s now been documented that, in at least a few cases, a LEAF’s onboard charger has been damaged after charging with a WattStation, but the cause of the problem is not yet clear.

A California Nissan dealership told PluginCars.com that it has warned customers to avoid using the WattStation to charge their LEAFs, and that Nissan North America sent an email to dealers about the problem. A search of the MyNissanLeaf Forum found mentions of the issue as far back as April, and also found that local dealerships have been forced to replace the onboard chargers in several vehicles in multiple states. GE Energy's Sean Gannon told our colleagues that the problem is limited to the LEAF, and so far has affected 11 LEAF owners.

On Thursday, a GE spokesman told Charged, “we're doing a lot of tests to try to re-create those failure modes so we can understand exactly what's driving it. When we do our testing, we're not able to re-create that damage with the GE WattStation. We feel strongly that the GE WattStation is not the cause of these issues, and we're going to keep working with Nissan to get to the bottom of this thing.”

In other words, they’re not sure what is happening, but they are sure that they don’t want to bear the blame. Stay tuned.

Image: Nissan