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Comment by wolfi1 | Hacker News Reader

In fact, they did see the writing, BMW for example developed the Hydrogen 7 [0], Mercedes Benz produced Fuel Cell cars[1]. What they didn't expect, was, that simple Lithium based batteries would take over. Obviously they wanted to retain the range of the combustion engine cars

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_F-Cell

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Hydrogen fuel cell concept cars were in the news for as long as I can remember. I consider them nothing more than appeasement to prevent stricter emission standards. German politicians have been prophesying self-regulation towards more efficient cars for more than thirty years now. What we got instead was a SUV boom and cheating on emission tests.

VW had a skateboard platform concept EV 10+ years ago. They could have productized it if they had competent leadership.

We had EVs over 100 years ago and folks already knew the advantages of electric power over fossil fuel power. However, batteries have been the limiting factor for awhile. Even now, only Tesla seems to have batteries that meet consumers power/range/cost expectations and they exclusively own the largest battery plant in the world.

I'm not sure we can blame VW for being slower to EVs than Elon Musk and FWIW, the VW company seems to be pivoting to EVs the fastest. The Taycan - a VW product - is the first car that's competitive with a Model S.

Yip, was many electric cars before petrol took over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_P1

Being one example.

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