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BMW Breaks Apple CarPlay

Apple CarPlay Broken for BMW Owners

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When BMW’s ConnectedDrive service unexpectedly went down, it also took down people’s ability to use Apple CarPlay as well.  With the ConnectedDrive outage BMW owners who had paid the now defunct one-time $300 upgrade fee or those on the current $80 yearly subscription fee for CarPlay access were left in the dark.

The cause for these users to lose the ability to use CarPlay starts with the ConnectedDrive not being able to do what it’s named after, connecting. For BMW owners to use Apple CarPlay the Connected Drive feature needs to connect to a server that verifies they have a valid CarPlay subscription. Without this verification users were blocked from being able to access CarPlay. 

When it comes to Apple CarPlay integration, BMW has been the least consumer friendly by charging for access for something most auto manufacturers include for free. With this outage it leads to the question, what exactly are BMW owners paying for if the service does down for days at a time?