I think he means that they are intentionally trying to get the government to push hydrogen for the next few years while they are secretly working on electric cars. If the government focuses on electric and spends money building electrical infrastructure, the domestic automakers stand to lose a lot of ground to foreign companies that have already developed electric technology. They don't want a repeat of Tesla installing a supercharger network and controlling the infrastructure.
There's no need for that, the government can just give its domestic car industry special treatment; that's pretty common in a lot of countries and industries.
Perhaps they are saying this but it still does not make sense to me. Nissan is a Japanese company and has been selling popular EVs since 2011. Japan built out a network of chademo chargers. I just don’t see how focusing on a bad technology could actually be a secret way to invest in EVs. Openly investing in EVs seems like the best way to do that. It just sounds like Occam’s Razor applies here: the people in charge are out of touch and made a bad call.
