> Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason.

Hydrogen would enable a lot of very rich and powerful businesses to just pivot their business model a bit: the fossil fuel industry would have a destination for "grey hydrogen", pipeline owners could repurpose natural gas pipelines and bunkers for hydrogen, you'd still need refineries, tanker trucks to refill gas stations, you'd still need a nationwide network of gas stations in the first place...

In contrast, electric cars cut out a lot of the middlemen - once you got the car and a solar panel on your roof, you don't need _any_ of these industries any more. And you can't have that.