Canada

It's because hydrogen is superior to electric batteries in terms of ease of storage, range, filling up, and probably even energy use when/if enough research is poured into it.

The issue is there's no infrastructure for it like we have for electric. Everyone can charge their car at home. Not everyone is willing to invest in a huge hydrogen electrolysis system at home to refuel.

Edit: to expand, since this comment seems to rub some people the wrong way.

EV is the clear winner in a practical sense, as evident by EV's exploding on the scene the last decade or so. However, if you look at the science objectively, Toyota and Honda are not wrong to have considered Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles as superior in many respects to EVs.

Either approach is better than ICE/fossil fuels, so EV or Hydrogen Fuel Cell, they're both wins.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells are the closest thing to a near 1:1 replacement of fossil fuels, without the fossil part of it. It is superior in terms of transportation, refueling, range, etc.. It is not as efficient in terms of energy output, but it is for storage. You can refuel in the same time it takes to refuel a gas powered car. The only waste is essentially water. It has a lot of limitations in terms of being able to produce your own at home, as not every home is going to want to invest $10k+ (at least the cost 10 years ago when I looked) in an anode based hydrogen fuel cell exchange. They are relatively easy to make though, but I don't think this is as easy as just plugging your car into the charger every night.

Li-Ion and Li-Pol batteries have severe limitations. Not just in recharge cycles, but in rare earth mineral costs, environmental damage, and just straight up energy limitations for how dense the energy storage can be ratioed to the weight and stability/safety.

Hydrogen fuel cells have none of those limitations, and their efficiency is by how efficient we can make the hydrogen consumption, so there's a lot more potential for improvements down the road without being hamstrung on energy storage problems.

They also weigh less, so they get better range, and are safer cars on the road because of the lower weight. They also won't require replacing the battery every 10 or so years (sooner if you drove a Nissan Leaf...).

BYD Flash charging is sick as fuck.

, China is coming with a new solid state battery for E.V.s that will revolutionize everything.

every week those stories come out. Will be too expensive for most people if/when they ever actually appear.

The Japanese are incredibly stubborn for these things

They’re not stubborn, they don’t have a choice. The Japanese electrical grid is antiquated and stressed to the breaking point. A massive consumer migration to EVs would cause total collapse.

There aren’t any easy solutions either. The Fukushima nuclear disaster has made the situation even worse, both by reducing the amount of generation capacity and by constraining policy (new nuclear plants are politically untenable now).

Renewables seem like the obvious answer, but the grid infrastructure isn’t good there. There’s No storage capacity, nor is there any geographic redundancy. Japan is a country of 122 million people crammed into a few small islands. When the sun stops shining, it stops shining for the whole country. When the wind doesn’t blow, it doesn’t blow for the whole country. This means if they become dependent on a lot of renewables they become susceptible to multiple-day blackouts, with potentially severe consequences in the winter.