The Q7’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Explorer doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the Q7 and Explorer have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Q7 has power child safety locks, allowing the driver to activate and deactivate them from the driver's seat and to know when they're engaged. The Explorer’s child locks have to be individually engaged at each rear door with a manual switch. The driver can’t know the status of the locks without opening the doors and checking them.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the Q7. But it costs extra on the Explorer.
A passive infrared night vision system optional on the Q7 Prestige helps the driver to more easily detect people, animals or other objects in front of the vehicle at night. Using an infrared camera to detect heat, the system then displays the image on a monitor in the dashboard. The Explorer doesn’t offer a night vision system.
Both the Q7 and the Explorer have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, front and rear seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras, rear cross-path warning and available around view monitors.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does side impact tests on new vehicles. In this test, which crashes the vehicle into a flat barrier at 38.5 MPH and into a post at 20 MPH, results indicate that the Audi Q7 is safer than the Ford Explorer:
|
Q7 |
Explorer |
|
Front Seat |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
Chest Movement |
.8 inches |
.9 inches |
Abdominal Force |
128 lbs. |
161 lbs. |
|
Into Pole |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
Hip Force |
557 lbs. |
573 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.