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.
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
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.
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.
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...
Also, they invested in in hydrogen internal combustion engines just as much.
