DS Virgin Racing's Sam Bird has been slapped with a ten-place grid penalty ahead of this weekend's Mexico City ePrix.
Gearbox problems have plagued the DS Virgin squad all season, with Bird suffering from an issue in the closing stages of the Marrakesh ePrix while Alex Lynn was forced to retire from the Santiago round following a gearbox failure mid-race.
Earlier in the week, it was confirmed that Lynn would face a grid demotion in Mexico City after the team used its 'joker' gearbox change on the driver last race while the announcement of Bird's penalty places the British team in a difficult position for the fifth round of the season.
"We had a production deviation – the specification of the part didn't change from last year but we changed it for mileage reasons," explained Thomas Chevaucher, DS Performance technical director, to Autosport.
"We had the wrong batch of materials used to produce that part, which was the origin of the problem we've had from the beginning of the season.
"We changed one gearbox after Hong Kong, one after Marrakech, then we changed two gearboxes now – so all four gearboxes have been changed in the garage.
"We're now hoping we won't have that problem again, we should be fine."
While Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler have requested an inverter homologation change following continuing reliability problems throughout season four which has seen reigning champion, Lucas di Grassi, fail to finish inside the top ten once, Chevaucher declared that a similar process would not have to be carried out for the DS Virgin squad:
"We're not changing the homologation. The design didn't change at all from last season, it was just not made with a good material," he said.
"Optimisation is a key part in motorsport and especially in Formula E. The parts are designed for a very specific kind of material and as soon as you don't have the good material the part can break at any time because it is overloaded, let's say.
"For sure we are looking for small areas of performance but it's not the issue we have here. It's not because we designed it more aggressively than the past.
"It's very difficult to validate the part on the dyno specifically for the gearbox and the running in testing is very limited.
"You produce parts and put it in the race car straight away without having to validate a specific batch, as you can do in other series," he added.
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