The Q8 e-tron Sportback’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Ariya doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the Q8 e-tron Sportback and Ariya have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Q8 e-tron Sportback 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 Ariya’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 Q8 e-tron Sportback’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 Ariya doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
The Q8 e-tron Sportback has a standard Secondary Collision Brake Assist, which automatically applies the brakes in the event of a crash to help prevent secondary collisions and prevent further injuries. The Ariya 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.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the Q8 e-tron Sportback. But it costs extra on the Ariya.
Earlier warning of stopped traffic, traffic signals, dangerous road conditions, weather, or accidents, can keep driver's safer and prevent crashes. The Q8 e-tron Sportback has Car-to-X Services, a system that seamlessly communicates important warnings to the driver about impending danger, if they're available. The Ariya doesn’t offer a system that can receive automated systems from infrastructure.
Both the Q8 e-tron Sportback and Ariya have rear cross-traffic warning, but the Q8 e-tron Sportback has Automatic Brake Activation (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The Ariya’s Rear Cross Traffic Alert doesn’t automatically brake.
Both the Q8 e-tron Sportback and the Ariya have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver and front passenger knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, front seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras, rear cross-path warning and available around view monitors.
The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback weighs 741 to 1475 pounds more than the Nissan Ariya. 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 “Good” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the Q8 e-tron Sportback its highest rating: “Top Safety Pick Plus” for 2022, a rating granted to only 131 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Ariya has not been fully tested, yet.