Honda, realizing this electric car thing isn't a fad, says it will have a plug-in hybrid and a battery electric vehicle on the road in 2012. But that doesn't mean it's giving up on hydrogen. 
 
 CEO Takanobu Ito (pictured) laid out Honda's timeline for advanced technology vehicles today, promising to have a demonstration fleet of cars with cords on the road in California by the end of this year and in showrooms by the end of 2012. He also said the nickel metal-hydride battery pack in the Honda Civic Hybrid will be replaced with a lithium-ion pack next year. 
 
 No one's offering any specifics about the car, but Honda says the EV will be a small "commuter car," which makes us hopeful we'll see the retro-adorable EV-N concept in showrooms good for 60 kilometers on a liter of gas, which is 141 mpg by our math. 
 
 The announcement comes as much of the industry promises to have electric vehicles in showrooms by 2014 and California pushes automakers to embrace the technology. 
 
 Although the first-gen Honda Insight was the first hybrid available in the United States when it arrived in December, 1999, Honda has lagged behind Toyota in the market. These days the Prius outsells the Civic Hybrid six to one. Honda also has been lukewarm about battery electrics, opting to focus on hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles like the impressive FCX Clarity. 
 
 But Nissan is rolling out the Leaf electric vehicle later this year and Toyota promises to have a plug-in hybrid Prius next year and an electric RAV4 in 2012. California's zero-emissions vehicle mandate requires the largest automakers to offer a combined total of 60,000 plug-ins and EVs between 2012 and 2014. 
 
 With competitors and regulators forcing its hand, Honda's decided to go all-in. 
 
 "Considering Toyota is set to launch a plug-in hybrid next year, Honda's 2012 schedule sounds a bit far off," Kazutaka Oshima, president of Rakuten Investment Management, told Reuters. "This underscores the gap in the level of technology at these automakers. That said, while Toyota has the lead, there really isn't anyone else who is as advanced as Toyota in this field and Honda appears to be close." 
 
 That's because Honda's been working on batteries all along. It was the first automaker to use something other than lead-acid batteries when it introduced the EV Plus in 1997. 
 
 “My predecessor didn’t like batteries,” Ito said, according to Bloomberg, referring to former president Takeo Fukui. “But we have been researching them all along. Since I became president, that was accelerated quite a bit.” 
 
 That acceleration has led to the development of lithium-ion batteries through Blue Energy, Honda's joint venture with GS Yuasa. We'll see the first of those batteries next year in the next-gen Civic Hybrid. They'll appear in other models thereafter. 
 
 Ito has launched a campaign to bring down the cost of hybrids. It started with the utilitarian Insight, continues with the sporty CR-Z and will include the forthcoming Fit Hybrid, which could be the cheapest hybrid ever when it appears later this year. 
 
 Company VP Koichi Kondo says hybrids and plug-in hybrids will rise from 6 percent of Honda's global production to more than 10 percent by 2014. (He didn't include EVs in the forecast.) That is almost certainly a response to tightening fuel economy and emissions regulations in the United States and Europe. 
 
 Despite the announcement, Honda still sees battery electric vehicles as a stopgap. It remains convinced that hydrogen fuel cells are the future. Honda is hardly alone in developing the technology, but it has been among the most vocal in supporting it. 
 
 "We feel that it's the ultimate solution," Honda spokesman Chris Naughton told CNNMoney, "but the infrastructure is developing more slowly than we had anticipated." 
 
 Photos: Honda 
 
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 A Hybrid logo is pictured on the Honda CR-Z electric car during the second media day of the 80th Geneva Car Show at the Palexpo in Geneva March 3, 2010. 
 
 WAKO, Japan | 
 
 WAKO, Japan (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co plans to launch a plug-in hybrid and battery electric model in 2012 as part of its strategy to push to the front of a race by global automakers to develop more fuel-efficient cars. 
 
 Japan's No.2 automaker was one of the world's only car makers to offer gasoline-electric cars during the past decade but has begun looking like a laggard without a "strong" hybrid or concrete plans to mass-produce pure electric cars. 
 
 Global competitors from Volkswagen AG to Hyundai Motor Co are preparing to launch strong hybrid models that are more fuel-efficient than Honda's "mild" hybrids such as the Insight, while also readying battery-run cars. 
 
 At a news conference, Chief Executive Takanobu Ito, outlining the firm's medium-term strategy, said Honda was planning to sell a plug-in hybrid vehicle and a battery-powered electric model in Japan and the United States in 2012. 
 
 Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp is planning to bring a plug-in hybrid to market in 2011 and recently formed an alliance with California start-up Tesla Motors to develop electric vehicles. 
 
 "Considering Toyota is set to launch a plug-in hybrid next year, Honda's 2012 schedule sounds a bit far off. This underscores the gap in the level of technology at these automakers," said Kazutaka Oshima, president of Rakuten Investment Management. 
 
 "That said, while Toyota has the lead, there really isn't anyone else who is as advanced as Toyota in this field and Honda appears to be close." 
 
 Asked about the walk-outs over the past two months at affiliated suppliers in China, the world's biggest auto market, Ito acknowledged that poor communication may have been at fault. 
 
 "It's possible that the dialogue between workers and our local management in China was lacking," he said, vowing to do better to prevent further disruption. 
 
 Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo said at the conference that Honda -- the single-biggest victim of China's recent labor disputes -- had lost production of less than 20,000 units from the strikes. He said Honda still planned to produce 632,200 vehicles in China this year by making up for the lost output. 
 
 CRAWLING BACK 
 
 Honda lost a few years in the green-car race after deciding in late 2008 to drop the development of clean diesel engines to power its bigger cars, opting instead to come up with a new, more powerful hybrid system that could be mounted on larger models. 
 
 Ito did not give an update on the new hybrid system, but said Honda would introduce "multiple" hybrid models in Japan within about a year using the existing technology. 
 
 Honda is looking to raise the ratio of hybrid vehicles to 10 percent or more of total production by 2015, from 5-6 percent now, Kondo said, rapidly boosting the percentage beyond 2015. 
 
 Honda had so far only announced plans to sell a battery-run electric car in the United States simply to meet legal requirements in California, arguing their batteries were too expensive to be practical.
– Honda is looking to make up lost ground in the market for energy-efficient cars and plans to have a plug-in hybrid and a battery-powered electric vehicle on American streets in 2012, reports Reuters. The company announced no specifics on models, other than to say the EV will be a small commuter car. "Which makes us hopeful we’ll see the retro-adorable EV-N concept in showrooms," writes Chuck Squatriglia at the Autopia blog of Wired. It gets about 140 mpg. (See photos in the gallery.)