Honda has announced it’ll roll out a hybrid version of its Fit mini-hatchback by late 2010 – a year and half ahead of the originally scheduled drop date. The green battle between Toyota and Honda has intensified recently but is the future of automotives really in hybrids? I mean more and more companies are looking at pure electric – an area Honda and Toyota haven’t really bothered with… yet.

Reuters: Honda Motor Co plans to roll out a gas-electric hybrid version of its Fit subcompact in the autumn of 2010, about a year and half ahead of the original schedule, to tap growing demand for low-emission cars, Nikkei business daily reported on Wednesday.

The automaker aims to sell the Fit hybrid for about 1.5 million yen ($15,800), below the price of 1.89 million yen for its Insight hybrid, and expects annual sales of over 50,000 vehicles, the paper said without citing sources.

Separately, public broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday that Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) plans to resume overtime at its factory in Aichi, central Japan, next month in response to strong demand for its new Prius hybrid.

The company has received orders for more than 110,000 vehicles and plans to raise monthly output of the model by 20 percent from the original schedule to about 50,000 cars, NHK said.

[via Japanese Green Cars]