Is Toyota's days as reigning champion in hybrid fuel economy? Well, Ford's giving it a shot. 

The 2013 Ford C-MAX Hybrid gets 47 miles per gallon in city driving and 44 mpg highway, which beats the Toyota Prius V at 44/40 mpg.

But if all of that extra room doesn’t matter, the regular Prius still nets 51/48 mpg city and highway, for those of you playing along at home. And Lilliputian-minded types can get the Prius C with even better city mileage, at 53 and 46 mpg city/highway.

Still, Ford’s C-MAX—which was announced with hybrid or electric plug-in drivetrains—has its own things going for it. For one, it’s also cheaper than the Prius V, by $1,300, starting at $25,995. It’s got 50 more horsepower. It’s roomier, with two more precious cubic feet of room (99.7, to be exact) than the Prius V (97.2). It has the trick hands-free liftgate, first seen on the Escape, that sometimes allows you to open the rear hatch by dancing an Irish jig underneath the bumper, when it actually works. And this might be entirely subjective, but it looks sharper than the Toyota, with the sort of uncluttered European styling that Ford fans have been clamoring for years.

Ford expects about half of C-MAX buyers to be trading in a competitor, such as a certain Prius V on which (if you haven’t gathered from the rest of this article) they’ve all but set their iron sights. The C-MAX Hybrid will be available nationwide beginning this fall.

via Ford courtesy of Automotive.com staff