[tuatoru]

Not the same situation. The first aeroplanes were not substitutes for an existing technology.

For substitutes to be viable, they have to have some combination of these attributes: lower up-front cost, cheaper to use, more convenient, more performant, more reliable, and/or more durable than their competitors, from the point of view of the end user.*

So which of these apply to hydrogen vs battery-electric?

* Or have better network effects, where users directly benefit from other people using the product (not a consideration here), or be advantaged by government decree.

[Omnitaus]

The same arguments were made against EV, but the infrastructure was built out nonetheless and now it's quite feasible to do cross-country trips. We know that carbon-based combustion isn't an option moving forward, I for one think it's valuable for both the risks and benefits of these emergent substitute technologies to be socialized.

Could you imagine trying to tell someone before the internet that we would run cables across the ocean to digitally connect separate continents? There's a reason the internet started as gov-funded research, and it's precisely because "market forces" are triangulating on the most profitable solution, not necessarily the most efficient one