I’m wondering if anyone else has seen this? When I drive in certain areas, my iPhone will disconnect from wireless CarPlay for ~30 seconds. I’m guessing there’s some sort of interference, but I’ve not seen this behavior in other cars.
This is in my 2023 G80 M3.
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Yes. I have an issue in 1 specific place in the city centre. It locks the CarPlay screen up every single time. Always the exact same place. It’s the only place that does it.
It happens with mine in only one spot on the highway. Best I can guess is it’s a data dead zone or the ramp meters interfere.
Well, on one hand, I’m glad I’m not the only one that has the issue. On the other hand, that means there’s an actual issue with the car.
Mine occurs on a light business road in the middle of a residential area.
On longer trips, I see the issue to varying degrees. In some cases, it will disconnect, drop to ConnectedDrive, then reconnect. I’ve also seen it where the entire CarPlay portion of the screen goes black and just won’t come back. I’ve had to reboot my phone to recover.
Have you seen this behavior?
My G20 m340i does this in certain parts of the city as well. Funny you posted this, see my most recent post.
Yes. Whenever I drive by large BMW dealerships of all places I get disconnects. My guess is a large number of cars using CarPlay in a small area creates issues.
Yeah. Both my wife and my car do it in the same exact places and she’s on an iPhone and I’m on Android. My earlier Google searching lead me to the conclusion that it’s RF interference in those specific areas causing the disconnects.
It’s just interference. There is likely a high-powered transmitter in the area that a neighboring building is connected to. The frequency of the transmitter just so happens to be the same channel as your particular CarPlay receiver, which causes the disconnection. This is no different than your home router experiencing interference from neighbors, Bluetooth devices, and microwaves. There is nothing you can do about it. Your next vehicle will likely not experience the interference in that same area since the WiFi channels vary from car to car (but you may discover that there’s another area with interference).
The FCC recently opened up the 6GHz band for low-powered devices which future vehicles will eventually adopt. This may resolve interference issues in the future, but only if there are no high-powered transmitters on the same frequency… only time will tell this though.
I would buy that; however, not all vehicles with wireless CarPlay have the same issue (including my previous car and my partner’s X5) at the same location. It’s clearly a shielding issue that needs to be resolved.
ConnectedDrive > CarPlay
It’s also the one burning up cost of ownership dollars. You’re paying for that subscription. But never mind the monthly hit on the payment…it’s a better experience than CarPlay.
Uh… no. Not even remotely. Let me name a few as to why either CarPlay or Google Drive are better:
- I don’t have to pay for map updates
- Routing based on traffic and travel time are actually accurate and don’t require a subscription
- Various choices for map apps (Waze comes to mind)
- The ability to listen to my audio books while I’m driving
- The ability to listen to text messages using text to speech and respond using speech to text
- The ability to participate in Zoom, WebEx, and Teams meetings while I’m driving
And no, there’s no subscription for CarPlay in my 2023. I purchased it outright.
To provide some perspective, I bought a 2015 F30 335i brand new with just ConnectedDrive (obviously). Wanting CarPlay was enough of a driver to motivate me to buy a new car; however, I was able to install an aftermarket (BimmerTech) CarPlay head. That got me another three years on the car.
This is an issue with wireless carplay in general. I experience the same thing around the airport in my city, but my friend has had the same issue in the same area with his Honda with wireless carplay. Wish there was an option to choose wired connection instead.
It’s interference. I get the same thing when I drive past a certain intersection. People with wireless CarPlay of various makes have told me that they’ve experience outages at the same intersection as well