HMM: We Found Out Why BMW Charges $80 a Year for Apple CarPlay. “This after-sales support is a relatively new problem that automakers are facing. As cars become more and more intertwined with electronics and software, the interactions and potential for errors increase exponentially. This is less of a problem for a company like Apple, which sells a phone for hundreds of dollars that gets replaced after a couple of years. Automakers like BMW, on the other hand, are expected to build a car that works just like the day it rolled off the showroom floor for hundreds of thousands of miles in all kinds of conditions.”