[taneq]

The hydrogen-is-the-enemy-of-EVs thing comes from the way that car manufacturers in the '90s pushed hydrogen as the "fuel of the future" in order to stall the CARB EV mandate from interfering with their ICE car sales. It was a cynical bait-and-switch where they simultaneously insisted that it was impossible to build acceptable BEVs (despite both the GM EV1 and the Rav4-EV being universally lauded) and extolled hydrogen fuel cell EVs as the Bright New Future that was "only 10 years away". This let them continue business as usual in exchange for the occasional puff piece on hydrogen.

If they hadn't been allowed to get away with it, we'd have had practical EVs by 2000 instead of having to wait another decade for Tesla.

[clouddrover]

That doesn't seem very likely. Nissan was mass producing EVs before Tesla:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_electric_vehicles

The hydrogen conspiracy theory doesn't make any practical sense.