To the dismay to anyone that was looking at buying a new BMW, there will be a charge for Apple CarPlay. No joke, BMW is going to charge a yearly $80 subscription fee for CarPlay. Mind you this is a feature that is included as a standard feature in lower-priced cars. To help people get used to the idea or more accurately addicted to the convenience of the ApplePlay; anyone that buys a 2019 BMW model will get a free year of access. After that, you will have to shell out $300 for a lifetime subscription which is defined as 20 years. You may not know what CarPlay is. The Apple CarPlay service enables iPhone owners to sync their iPhone with the car’s infotainment system. It’s basically glorified Bluetooth and that is why other car dealerships have it standard for free.
So you might be wondering who in their right minds would pay $80 per year $300 for a lifetime subscription (20 years) for a feature that is free everywhere else? Someone buying a $147,500 BMW i8 could care less about a few hundred dollars on top of the asking price of the car. Now for everyone else, if you must have CarPlay buy an aftermarket stereo system. You should not have to pay for a feature that is free on cars.
Now to be fair to BMW they did tell everyone 18 months ago that they were planning to do this insane; I mean this ambitious change to the Apple CarPlay feature. The carmaker let us know about the forthcoming subscription service however not sure anyone thought they would actually go through with it. The reason the automaker is doing this is so that it can keep the base model price of their vehicle down. What it should have down is just raised the price of the car so it would not be such a big blow to the everyman.