Honda Motor Co. announced Wednesday that it will launch a new, affordable gas-electric hybrid car in the U.S., Japan and Europe in early 2009, one of four new hybrid models the car maker plans to release by 2015 to challenge rival Toyota Motor Corp.’s dominance in the green car market.

Speaking in Tokyo, Honda President Takeo Fukui said a new hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle, the FCX Clarity, will be available in July for leasing in California to a limited number of customers. It aims to deliver 200 of the vehicles in the next three years.

These new vehicle launches highlight Honda’s aggressive new push to reclaim its role as a leader in green car technology.

In 1999, Honda was the first to launch a hybrid car, the Insight, to the U.S. market and later introduced hybrid versions of the Civic and Accord. But Honda’s green efforts were quickly overshadowed by Toyota, whose four-seater Prius hybrid proved more practical for consumers than the two-seater Insight and has been a runaway hit with drivers since it first went on sale in the U.S. in 2000.

During the last decade, Toyota has sold more than 1.46 million hybrids world-wide, including more than one million Prius hybrids. Honda has sold about 262,000 hybrids to date and discontinued sales of two models, the Insight and Accord, because of poor sales.

But Honda now has an ambitious goal to sell 500,000 hybrids per year sometime after 2010, though that would still fall short of Toyota’s target of selling one million hybrids annually by the turn of the decade.

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