> I'm convinced that the Japanese government is terrified of EVs because all the small and medium-sized businesses which support the Japanese auto industry will be absolutely gutted when vehicles contain drastically fewer parts.
For what it's worth, this theory is blown up by hydrogen based vehicles, which Japan has gone heavily in on. Yes, slightly more parts than an EV, but not a ton. And the drivetrain is electric.
It really shows the bias in Honda’s management here. They’ve also spent years trying to develop and promote their hydrogen fuel cell cars and it’s just as much of a failure as their EV division yet they aren’t axing that golden child.
That's a fundamental misunderstanding of why they're going in on hydrogen so hard - it's something they can generate domestically and without geopolitical implications.
If there is a war with china or in the middle east, hydrogen vehicles are somewhat immune to oil or rare earth spikes.
They will likely never roll out hydrogen power in any large capacity but the capability will be there if they need it
If we get into an actual shooting war with China, I don't think there's enough hydrogen generating facilities to make much of a difference. If maybe 20% of vehicles on the road were using hydrogen, maybe?
Considering how much money and effort both Toyota and Honda have poured into trying to kick start a hydrogen economy over the past decade and a half, and how much EV technology was evolved over the same time span, would it not make more sense to switch to the technology that actually is proven and actually has consumer demand for?
It's not like they're switching all that military hardware to hydrogen too.
Japan can't solve all of its energy woes, but it can ease it a lot by restarting all the nuclear reactors they shut down after Fukushima, and to be fair, they've been trying [0], but stuff breaks after not having been used in over a decade.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq6v0v32rg1o
I will say that I think they have failed at the goals that they stated.
> would it not make more sense to switch to the technology that actually is proven and actually has consumer demand for?
fwiw they started this policy in the 90s, and i definitely agree that they should think about alternatives
The drivetrain is still electric with hydrogen vehicles.
They can also generate electricity domestically. In fact, that is much, much, much, much easier then producing hydrogen.
Its an idiots version of geoplitics to bet on hydrogen just because you can produce it from electricity.
Because factually speaking nobody produces it from electricity, and its never competitive. So it would never be used by most people over natural gas produced hydrogen.
> hydrogen vehicles are somewhat immune to oil or rare earth spikes.
They would not be immune to rare earth anymore then EVs. In fact, it requires more complex supply chains an more exposure to more stuff.
> but the capability will be there if they need it
No it isn't. They do not have the capability to role it out. Producing a few prototype vehicles an a few fuel stations isn't really relevant to the question of can you produce 10 million of them, and fuel them reliably and cheaply. And Japan has no capability to do that.
Is there a place somewhere in the world where Hydrogen powered passenger vehicles are a success? I know that the one Hydrogen filling station here in Australia's Capital City has shut down after opening with great fanfare a few years ago. And the approximately 20 or so Hydrogen cars it supplied are no longer being used.
I just looked it up for Germany[0] and there were a whopping 3 (0.0%) new hydrogen fuel cell cars registered in Februrary 2026. Even LPG cars were more with 397 registered.
For comparison 21.9% were BEVs, 11.5% Plugin hybrids, ~51% pure petrol or non plug-in hybrid, and 14.8% Diesel.
[0] https://www.kba.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Fahrzeugzula...
LPG isn't a good metric of a "weird" fuel, there are countries such as Italy where it's immensely popular
They have not gone heavely in on hydrogen based vehicles. They have talked about it a lot, and given some subsidies, but nothing so major as to make any impact at all.
Also, they invested in in hydrogen internal combustion engines just as much.