Both the SQ8 and Macan have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The SQ8 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 Macan’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.
The SQ8’s standard pretensioning seatbelts also sense rear collisions and remove slack from the seatbelts to help protect the occupants from whiplash and other injuries. The Macan doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The SQ8 has standard Maneuver Braking that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The Macan doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
Earlier warning of stopped traffic, traffic signals, dangerous road conditions, weather, or accidents, can keep driver's safer and prevent crashes. The SQ8 has Car-to-X Services, a system that seamlessly communicates important warnings to the driver about impending danger, if they're available. The Macan doesn’t offer a system that can receive automated systems from infrastructure.
A passive infrared night vision system optional on the SQ8 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 Macan doesn’t offer a night vision system.
The SQ8 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 Macan’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the SQ8’s standard rear cross-path warning system uses sensors in the rear to alert the driver to vehicles approaching from the side, helping the driver avoid collisions. The Macan doesn’t offer a rear cross-path warning system.
Both the SQ8 and the Macan have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front and rear side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, front and rear seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, all wheel drive, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems and rearview cameras.
The Audi SQ8 weighs 814 to 1063 pounds more than the Porsche Macan. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.
For its top level performance in IIHS driver and passenger-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, side impact, roof strength and head restraint tests, its standard vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention system, its standard vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention system, and its standard headlight’s “Acceptable” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the SQ8 its highest rating: “Top Safety Pick Plus” for 2022, a rating granted to only 131 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Macan has not been tested, yet.