This weekend, for example, a bunch of BMW owners noticed that CarPlay no longer worked in their cars, and reaching out to the dealership got them a confirmation the system was indeed down.

To clarify, Apple CarPlay itself didn’t experience an outage. By design, CarPlay runs on the iPhone, so it can also be used without an Internet connection; n theory, as long as the smartphone is turned on and all connection requirements are met, there’s no reason for CarPlay not to run. So, according to this reddit thread, the issue happened on BMW’s side, with several dealerships allegedly confirming the connectivity problems in some cars.

Oddly enough, some of those who were unable to launch CarPlay in their BMWs connected to the customer portal page online to check the status of the service, only to be told they need to pay for the feature. Others were getting an active license notification, though CarPlay still wasn’t working.

“I spoke with my sales rep at the dealership and verified issues are going on. Had me check the customer portal website which has the car and all the information/apps on it. It shows that I’m subscribed to CarPlay. He said for some people who lost the feature it shows that they have to pay for the app all of a sudden, and some like myself are still showing a valid subscription,” one BMW owner explains.

No workaround was found during the outage, but BMW is believed to have already resolved the glitch, so at the time of writing, CarPlay should, at least theoretically, run correctly in all BMW cars.

If it still doesn’t, your best option is to reach out to your dealership and check the customer portal to see if you’re also being told to pay for CarPlay.