Wireless CarPlay Doesn't Connect When Hearing Aids Are Connected To iPhone

I have an iPhone 17 running iOS 26.6.1. I drive a 2020 BMW M2C which has an NBTevo head unit running iDrive 6. The car hasn't been updated for a couple of years. This vehicle only supports wireless CarPlay. I got the iPhone last October and CarPlay initially worked properly, as did the previous iPhones. Somewhere around January, I noticed that CarPlay intermittently would not connect. If I tried to manually connect, it would fail with the error "Unable to establish connection". I tried clearing the pairing on the iPhone and the Car and re-pairing. It would sometimes connect but other times it had the same failure.

I did some searching on the internet and found that some people were reporting their iPhone would not connect using CarPlay if their AirPods were connected to the phone. I don't have AirPods, but I do wear hearing Oticon hearing aids which connect to the iPhone using MFi.

I did some testing today and it turns out that the problem I'm experiencing is exactly the same as the problem with AirPods. If I turn off my hearing aids, CarPlay will connect. If I turn the hearing aids back on, CarPlay will drop. Sometimes it drops almost instaneously. Other times, it takes a few minutes.

This did not used to happen. I think this problem was introduced with either iOS 26.2 or 26.3.

This isn't acceptible. Users should not have to chose been using CarPlay or using their hearing aids (or AirPods). I understand it doesn't really make sense to use CarPlay with AirPods, since CarPlay uses the vehicle audio system. However, that breaks down because headphones and hearing aids have completely different purposes.

Apple needs to fix this. Does Apple follow this community or do I need to raise a support request?