For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Volvo XC40 have pretensioners to tighten the seatbelts and eliminate dangerous slack in the event of a collision and force limiters to limit the pressure the belts will exert on the passengers. The Maserati Grecale doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
The XC40’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Grecale doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
In the past twenty years hundreds of infants and young children have died after being left in vehicles, usually by accident. When turning the vehicle off, drivers of the XC40 are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Grecale doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The XC40 has a standard Whiplash Protection System (WHIPS), which use a specially designed seat to protect the driver and front passenger from whiplash. During a rear-end collision, the WHIPS allows the backrest to travel backwards to cushion the occupants and the headrests move forward to prevent neck and spine injuries. At the same time the pretensioning seatbelts fire, removing slack from the belts. The Grecale doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
The XC40 has standard Post-impact braking, which automatically apply the brakes in the event of a crash to help prevent secondary collisions and prevent further injuries. The Grecale doesn’t offer a post collision braking system: in the event of a collision that triggers the airbags, more collisions are possible without the protection of airbags that may have already deployed.
The XC40’s standard lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane and gently nudges the vehicle back towards its lane. A lane departure warning system costs extra on the Grecale.
The XC40 has a standard blind spot warning system that uses sensors to alert the driver to objects in the vehicle’s blind spots where the side view mirrors don’t reveal them. A system to reveal vehicles in the Grecale’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the XC40 has standard Cross Traffic Alert and Braking Intervention automatically engages the brakes to help avoid a collision. Maserati charges extra for Rear Cross Path on the Grecale and the Grecale’s Rear Cross Path does not include automatic braking.
Both the XC40 and the Grecale have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, all wheel drive, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, rearview cameras and available around view monitors.
For its top level performance in all IIHS frontal, side, rear impact and roof-crush tests, and its standard front crash prevention system, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the XC40 the rating of “Top Safety Pick” for 2017, a rating granted to only 231 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Grecale has not been tested, yet.