TORRANCE, Calif. — Honda made a forceful case Wednesday that the hybrid engine, not the battery-electric vehicle, will define the near future of American driving — announcing plans to introduce 15 new hybrid models across its Honda and Acura brands globally by 2030, with North America as the primary target market. The announcements came during a global business briefing held in Japan, where Honda’s chief executive, Toshihiro Mibe, signaled a deliberate reallocation of engineering and manufacturing resources away from the company’s earlier electric-vehicle timeline and toward what he described as the more immediate path to reducing emissions at scale. “We have made steady progress in the development of hybrid vehicle technologies, where Honda has strengths,” Mibe said, “based on our belief that hybrid models will continue to be the key to addressing environmental challenges.” Two concept vehicles anchored the briefing: a next-generation Acura Hybrid SUV Prototype and a Honda Hybrid Sedan Prototype. Neither is a production model, but both are designed to preview the direction Honda intends to pursue with an entirely new hybrid platform and powertrain architecture that the company expects to begin rolling out in 2027. The engineering claims attached to that new system are significant. Honda says it has developed a next-generation version of its two-motor hybrid system — an arrangement the company has refined over more than a decade across models like the Accord and CR-V — that will improve fuel economy by more than 10 percent compared with current-generation hybrids while simultaneously cutting system costs by 30 percent. A newly developed electric all-wheel-drive unit is also part of the package, promising more precise torque delivery to individual wheels than is possible through conventional mechanical systems. For Acura, which has remained largely on the periphery of the electrification conversation while luxury rivals moved aggressively into battery-electric