"All it takes" is doing very heavy lifting in that sentence. There's a good reason that hydrogen fueling stations are basically non-existent aside from a few in California. Distribution and fueling is quite complicated compared to conventional liquid fuels.
basically most of the main highways are covered
I don't know that people's cultural attraction to fueling at the gas station is high at all.
After we got an EV I realised how much I had actually disliked filling the car. Smelly, every time an in your face reminder of the fossil fuels you are burning. Having to go in an queue. Having to wait and jostle for a spot with the filler hoses on the correct side for my vehicle. Dodgy characters milling around. Unable to use cellphone and take calls. Possibility of being involved in holdups/antisocial behaviour.
Why are you unable to use your cellphone?
With the old system, I fuel in 2 minutes and I can travel 600 kms on it or approx 6 hrs (assuming 50 litres fuel tank and 7.5 litres per 100 km, and 120 km/h).
(I don't have a car, and I'm open minded about EVs, just honestly wondering)
They are MUCH better for day to day if you can charge at your home. You always start the day with a full battery. I only use a supercharger on long trips. Note that I actually drive farther than most for various reasons but that route has a supercharger at a grocery store. I tend to come back at the end of the weekend and do my shopping at the same time, so in reality I don't spend any time refueling.
So total yearly time where you are actively "fueling" your vehicle in a supervised manner favors EVs for the vast majority of people.
With an ICE, you can only fuel up at a gas station, but it is fast (not always though, queues, etc.).
With an EV you charge overnight at home, and only charge on the road as required, and it can be slow (not all that slow though, not a big problem for us). Depending on your usage and vehicle range, you may never need to charge on the road at all.
I wouldn't personally want to own an EV if we couldn't charge at home.
No. This is the reason many still aren’t switching to an EV. Gas cans exist, the same does not exist for an EV. You can fuel up a liquid fuel vehicle anywhere. An EV must be charged at a specific station, be it at home or some other location.
And if the gas station doesn't maintain its hoses, nozzles, or seals; you don't wind up with a slight smell, a carcinogenic irritation -- you experience frostbite to you hand immediately.
If you're lucky. If you're unlucky the first you realize there is a leak is when it ignites. Fortunately it is harder to make it explode than gasoline vapors but it also escapes far more readily than gasoline does.
With an electric car I can get home at evening, park my car and connect a plug, exactly as I connect my phone to the charger before going to bed. Time wasted? Probably less than a minute every couple of days. Also, I pay it in my electricity bill, the price of electricity doesn't go as high as the price of gas. Also... it's impossible to distinguish between the electricity used to charge a car than the one used for domestic purpose. This means that the government cannot add taxes on electricity used in vehicles, as it does with gas. Finally there is the possibility to install solar and produce the electricity myself.
> All it takes is a new pump at existing gas stations
Easy? We have natural gas cars since decades. Only recently (last 10 years) you find a sufficient number of stations that serve you natural gas. Still for nonsense rules in my country you can't fill your natural gas car by yourself but it has to be done by an operator, so good luck filling it in the weekend or at night. I imagine the same rules would apply for hydrogen.
Now, after decades of natural gas cars, they are mostly usable (my parents have one). Inconvenient, since you maybe have to drive 10km to get to a station, and you have the same range than an electric car (350km more or less). Will hydrogen be that better? I don't think so.
While all of this happens, electric car chargers are starting to appear everywhere. You go to a supermarket, there is a charger, you stop to eat on the highway, there is a charger, or more of them really, in the cities there are plenty of them (plus while the car is charging you don't pay for parking!).
It's nonsense to this day to not consider buying an electric car if buying a new car to me! I keep my diesel car since I already have it, it has more than 10 years, and works fairly well, and I don't like changing things that works, but when I will change it, I will buy an electric for sure.
You don't think you'll be paying a significant electricity tax once ICE cars are fully phased out?
Also, I don't know what you drive but my diesel has quite a bit more range than 350 km. Yours must be quite the guzzler.
But then Texas also just got rid of inspections... :(
Some sort of tax will be necessary to replace the fuel tax, but I'd be very surprisedby some attempt at a general electricity tax, or for that matter, a charging-station tax (since that won't affect the majority of EVs).