2025 Honda Civic Hatchback Sport Touring Hybrid First Test: So Close!

We don’t lightly apply the descriptor “perfect” to a vehicle, but the latest Honda Civic—particularly in its more powerful, highly efficient, and quieter hybrid form—gets as close as any compact car out there to earning the label. And that’s just the four-door sedan. The hybrid is also available in the more practical Civic hatchback. With its extra cargo capacity, the Civic Hybrid hatchback nudges Honda’s smallest car even closer to ideal.

The Goods

For 2025, every Civic gets a mild restyling—mostly new wheel designs, lighting internals, and grille designs. Honda also replaces the base LX and Sport models’ naturally aspirated 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine with an all-new one that, somehow, makes less power than before. It’s also quieter—although not enough—and joined by a stiffer body shell and some suspension improvements.

But the hybrid combining a 2.0-liter Atkinson-cycle four-cylinder engine with two electric motors and a 1.1-kWh battery is the biggest news. It is swapped in for the 180-hp turbocharged 1.5-liter four-cylinder offered in last year’s EX and Touring sedans and EX-L and Sport Touring hatchbacks, effectively taking over as top-spec powertrain for the sedan and hatch lineups.

It not only brings more power to the table, a stout 200 hp and 232 lb-ft of torque—outmuscling even the sporty Civic Si sedan, at least on torque—but it vaults the Civic’s EPA-estimated fuel economy way, way up to 50/45/48 mpg city/highway/combined.

Aerodynamic differences account for the hybrid sedan’s slightly better EPA figures, but still—the most efficient 2024 Civic hatchback had the turbo engine this hybrid replaces and could only muster 31/39/35 mpg city/highway/combined. The best a nonhybrid 2025 Civic hatchback can do is a merely OK 34 mpg combined.

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How Does a Hybrid Improve Something Already Good?

The current-generation Civic was already our favorite compact car. Even with its weak base engine, the Civic drives with typical Honda enthusiasm, and the interior is fantastic, with a great layout and cool style.

The car also exudes a sense of engineering refinement and attention to detail that other compacts simply can’t match. So how does stuffing a hybrid into its nose help?

Plenty. As mentioned, one of the Civic’s few sore spots is its elevated road and tire noise at speed. This is a longtime Honda trait that, model for model, often stands out against more hushed competitors.

For 2025, Honda’s suspension, body stiffness, and engine improvements are enough to somewhat tamp down its freeway cabin volume and improve the ride slightly. The hybrids, which also add active noise cancellation via the audio system and extra cabin insulation, are quieter still—and now among the quieter compacts out there.

Also helping matters? The hybrid system itself. It behaves differently than other setups out there, specifically Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive that powers the Prius and Corolla hybrids. In the Toyotas, the gas engine still does a lot of the work propelling the car forward, via the transmission; its dual electric motors—one a starter-generator, the other a larger drive motor—assist the gas engine as needed, and are capable of powering the wheels alone for brief periods with the engine off.

Honda flips that layout on its head, fitting a large 181-hp primary electric drive motor to the Civic and relying on it most of the time. The engine—which at 141 hp is much less powerful—merely spins the smaller starter-generator unit, feeding juice to the big motor and battery, meaning the Civic hybrid behaves more like an EV that happens to have an engine on board.

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This results in hushed operation, and the gas engine barely registers unless you plant the accelerator pedal—at which point, along with steady state highway travel, the gas engine can be clutched in to a single-speed drive to help power the wheels directly when it’s deemed more efficient to do so.

When you’re less interested in smooth, quiet operation and more into smoking vehicles in the adjacent lane pulling away from stoplights, the Civic Hybrid still impresses. The hatchback we tested, a fully loaded Sport Touring Hybrid, rips to 60 mph in 6.3 seconds.

That’s a hair behind an equivalent 2025 Civic Sport Touring Hybrid sedan (6.1 seconds) but well ahead of the last 200-hp Civic Si we tested (7.4 seconds) and the pre-hybrid 2022 Honda Civic Sport Touring hatchback with the turbo engine (7.7 seconds). And it’s not far off from hotter hatches such as the Volkswagen GTI.

Want a quicker Honda hatch? Only the 315-hp turbocharged Civic Type R is quicker, though we’ve yet to test the more sparingly equipped Civic Hatchback Sport Hybrid model, which likely is lighter (and therefore quicker) than this Sport Touring version.

Grabbing that quick acceleration time requires only that you brake-torque the powertrain, releasing the brake with the gas matted, and hang on. Interestingly, the faux “shifts” from the nonexistent transmission that Honda programs—mini torque dips in the engine, which otherwise revs somewhat naturally in sync with the driver’s acceleration demands, even though the electric motor is doing most of the actual work—go away if you launch with brake overlap.

Surely this maximizes power, but we appreciate that outside of a racetrack you’re treated to natural-seeming rising and falling revs as you accelerate rather than the usual engine-racing-to-redline-and-sitting-there sensation in other small hybrids under full throttle. Sport mode even amplifies a fake engine noise that sounds for all the world like the racier Type R’s 2.0-liter engine wailing away.

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Same Hybrid Excellence, Only in Hatchback Form

Like the Civic Sport Touring Hybrid sedan, the hatchback seems to ride smoother than lesser Civics, the hybrid setup’s extra mass helping add a sense of substance to the otherwise light and agile-feeling Civic platform.

Other performance metrics unsurprisingly mimic those of the hybrid sedan, with the hatchback’s decent 113-foot stop from 60 mph, 0.86 g of lateral grip, and 27.6-second figure-eight lap time actually improving on the sedan’s longer 120-foot stop and 0.83 g of grip but falling behind its 27.3-second lap time.

Steering the Civic remains a joy, with a talkative steering setup that responds eagerly without compromising straight-ahead stability on the freeway. The brake pedal responds well, too, especially for a hybrid, blending regen and mechanical braking seamlessly. A paddle on the steering wheel lets drivers dial up stronger regen on the fly, though unless you’re in the Sport drive mode, the car defaults back to a minimum setting after each stop.

So, the already great Civic hybrid sedan’s only room for improvement would be, well, more room, and the hatchback’s more spacious butt delivers. There’s 24.5 cubic feet of space in the large, pleasantly rectilinear cargo hold (that's around 10 cubic feet better than the Civic sedan’s sizeable trunk, but differences in the measurement methods stymie direct comparisons). Fold the rear seats down, and you get a (slightly ramped) extra platform to shove even more stuff onto (for a total of 46.2 cubic feet).

And the cool side-to-side rollup cargo shade from the last-gen Civic hatchback survives here, stowing neatly out of the way and requiring no special removal to make way when folding the rear seats.

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Speaking off Nice Butts, There’s a “But”

The hatchback’s practicality improvement over the sedan is indisputable. Except one thing: The two share a frustrating lack of rear-seat amenities. Look, we get it, the Civic is meant to be affordable, and certainly lower-priced versions aren’t expected to pamper rear-seat passengers with much.

On the other hand, the Civic costs more than most of its rivals, and the range-topping Sport Touring trim tested here retails for $34,300 before any special paints or accessories are added in and has only window switches and … nothing else back there.

Would it really hit Honda’s bottom line to include some rear-seat air vents or USB ports? This isn’t a problem unique to the Civic, either—the most affordable Honda car with air vents and power ports in back is the midsize Accord Hybrid’s midgrade EX-L trim, which costs about two grand more.

If you park your Civic hybrid outside, expect to liberally use its remote-start feature to cool down or heat up the cabin ahead of time if, say, you’re sticking a kid in the back seat. The Civic hatchback is an excellent family car otherwise, with plenty of space for child seats and strollers.

But kiddos with iPads will have to nag front-seat passengers to pass extra-long USB cables to the back to charge their devices, and parents up front will have to creatively direct the air vents to keep them comfortable. At least shade isn’t an issue, as Honda offers reasonably priced, full-coverage rear-door window shades as accessories, and the hatchback’s thick rear roof pillars also help keep baby cool in the summer.

Then again, kids these days could stand to toughen up, or something. Feel free to add in your own “back in the day, I walked uphill both ways to and from school” admonishment here. For commuters who aren’t toting kids or anyone else, ever, the Civic hatch is essentially flawless.

Efficient, quick, and roomy enough to haul bikes or other gear for weekend getaways and the occasional friend group, it’s all the car most people need, executed better than anything else in the segment, which is why the Civic remains our number-one pick among compact cars.

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