Tested: 2018 Honda Accord Hybrid Photos

And the hybrid shares the regular Accord's supple, isolated ride over nearly every type of road surface. Most potholes pass underneath without undue disturbance, and larger imperfections are diminished by its rigid structure and refined suspension tuning.

In its quest for maximum mpg, the hybrid wears low-rolling-resistance 225/50R-17 Michelin Energy Saver A/S all-season tires, and they're not particularly grippy.

Although the steering is reasonably direct and turn-in is snappy, the front end starts to push in even moderately aggressive cornering.

The Accord hybrid registered just 0.83 g on our skidpad; that's compared with 0.86 g for our long-term Accord and 0.90 g for the Accord Sport, a model that delights in such maneuvers.

A cleverly configured drivetrain employs two electric motors and an Atkinson-cycle, port-injected, 2.0-liter inline-four engine making 143 horsepower and 129 lb-ft of torque. Total combined output is 212 horsepower.

As we explained in our review of the mechanically similar, previous-generation 2017 Accord hybrid, this enables three distinct driving modes: an EV Drive mode using only battery power, a Hybrid Drive mode that uses electricity to propel the car with the gasoline engine powering the generator, and an Engine Drive mode employed under certain conditions that clutches the gasoline engine in at a fixed ratio.

In concert, the powertrain trio performs agreeably and nearly imperceptibly under mild requests, but it can grow coarser as more performance is asked of it.

At the track, the Accord hybrid hustled to 60 mph in 7.1 seconds and cleared the quarter-mile in 15.5 seconds with a trap speed of 90 mph.

Surprisingly quick given the slightly schizophrenic soundtrack, the Accord hybrid bettered the manual Accord Sport 1.5T's zero-to-60-mph time by 0.1 second and matched its quarter-mile time.

The 2.0T automatic Accord is the speed demon of the family; we reached 60 mph in just 5.7 seconds and posted a 14.3-second quarter-mile time in our long-termer. The Accord hybrid's archrival, the Toyota Camry XLE hybrid, was a bit pokier in our testing, requiring 7.9 seconds to hit the 60-mph mark and 16.0 seconds flat to complete the quarter-mile.

But it's really efficiency that excites most hybrid buyers, whether in the form of savings at the pump or just for the sheer satisfaction of extracting as much energy as possible from a unit of fuel via the technical wizardry of a hybrid-drive system.

As an indicator of how adept the Accord hybrid's propulsion system is at applying the most efficient engine, motor, or engine/motor combination for the motive task at hand, consider that the 2018 Accord hybrid earns an EPA fuel-economy estimate of 47 mpg in all three metrics: city, highway, and combined.

In typically enthusiastic Car and Driver testing, it returned 40 mpg overall, exactly matching our results with the Camry XLE hybrid.

What this efficiency is worth is a subjective question. Our top Touring trim sported a sticker price of $35,605, nearly a $10K premium over the $26,670 total for the manual Accord Sport 1.5T.

For 2018, Honda expanded the hybrid powertrain across four trim levels—a move that carries over to 2019. The lineup starts with the base sedan at $26,240, the EX at $30,140, the EX-L at $32,640, and finally the Touring tested here—so those less concerned with creature comforts can get their Accord hybrid for significantly less dough.

A similarly equipped Camry XLE hybrid rings in at $37,245, which brings us back to some very familiar territory in the realm of mid-size sedans: Accord versus Camry. In the hybrid round, we'll take the Honda.