[WorldMaker]

There was a Tesla-like company that stripped everything away only to discover that Hydrogen is not economically viable for cars: Tesla. I don't know how much of the original "manifesto" documents of Tesla survive at this point post-Musk's takeover, but they were very public early on about pointing out Hydrogen as a huge red herring that traditional car companies threw way too much R&D money at and treated as a sunk cost to recuperate, and that was most clearly a direct "subtweet" of Toyota. Stripping a hydrogen car all the way down: In addition to an expensive to build fuel cell and an expensive to maintain "tank" for liquid hydrogen, you've got an electric motor and a need for a large battery. Why carry around the weight of an expensive fuel cell and an expensive to maintain "tank" when you've already got the ingredients for an okay BEV (electric motor, large battery)? Everyone without the sunk costs of say Toyota's massive multi-decade R&D effort should look at that on paper as a massive red herring and that you should just optimize your weight distribution for a better/higher density battery rather than waste weight/space on expensive fuel cells and tanks.

[WorldMaker]

To be fair, when most car companies began researching Hydrogen in the 80s there was no indication that bets on battery research and the incredible density wins we've seen in especially the Lithium-Ion family of batteries would pay off nearly so well. At this point though, the writing should be on the wall that hydrogen fuel cells can't compete with modern battery density.

[N1H1L]

Could you locate that original paper somewhere? Really want to read it