For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Volvo EC40 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 Hyundai Nexo doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
The EC40’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Nexo doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the EC40 and Nexo have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The EC40 Ultimate 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 Nexo’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.
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 EC40 are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Nexo doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Volvo EC40 has a standard driver’s side knee airbag mounted low on the dashboard. The knee airbag helps prevent the driver from sliding under the seatbelts or the main frontal airbag; this keeps the driver better positioned during a collision for maximum protection. A knee airbag also helps keep the legs from striking the dashboard, preventing knee and leg injuries in the case of a serious frontal collision. The Nexo doesn’t offer knee airbags.
The EC40 has a standard front seat center airbag, which deploys between the driver and front passenger, protecting them from injuries caused by striking each other in serious side impacts. The Nexo doesn’t offer front seat center airbags.
The EC40 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 Nexo doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
The EC40 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 Nexo 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.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The EC40 has standard CTA Auto Brake that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The Nexo doesn’t offer automatic braking for stationary objects directly to the rear.
The EC40 has all-wheel drive to maximize traction under poor conditions, especially in ice and snow. The Nexo doesn’t offer all-wheel drive.
Both the EC40 and the Nexo have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, front wheel drive, 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, driver alert monitors and available around view monitors.
The Volvo EC40 weighs 653 to 780 pounds more than the Hyundai Nexo. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.