Nissan North America is still suffering the effects of a data center power outage, which took down online services for dealers in the US, Canada and Mexico at the weekend.

The company did not say how the fault occurred or why it had apparently no backup. But customer data was not compromised, it said in a statement.Nissan will waive late payment penalties for users unable to use its electronic business systems.

Down shift

A power outage at a data center on Saturday took out an essential communications system for dealers handling Nissan and Infiniti (Nissan's luxury brand), Nissan said on Twitter. Automotive News said the data center was in Denver. The power outage was restored quickly, but business applications remained down.

Nissan said some systems were being restored on Wednesday, but company tweets said on Thursday that some dealers were still unable to use its online services to order cars and parts. Neither could they access systems for recalls and warranty claims.

"Some customers are unable to use our online services due to a power failure at our datecenter [sic] that has been resolved," it said.

The fault affected Nissan applications and communications across the US, Canada and Mexico, and hit production as well as dealers, according to reports.

As to how long the disruption would continue, an earlier tweet said: "We do not have an estimation at this time, but are working to restore affected services as quickly as possible."

Nissan said some dealers had been able to continue operating by doing manual processing, but they could not order new vehicles or parts.