It's probably more likely that the voltage spike is feedback from the coil's high tension output and due to a poor grounding scheme.
I was interested in the way the service alert for the sensor coil was worded as it stated that once the coil was set to 0.8mm no more failures had been observed. That implied to me that a weak output from the sensor was somehow stressing the ignitor but that side of the equation is all done at very low current so I didn't understand how that would prompt failure. I could see where it would generate a poor spark but I'm not a brilliant enough electrician to follow the path to a dead ignitor.
Then again, maybe the Gill folks just have a higher tolerance percentage for failure than we'd like. I read of a large number of ignition coil failures over a t-rat.net followed by blown ignitors and a few bad sensors. You'd really have to Google hard to find the same volume of electrical failures with other brands of bikes.
