The promotion of hydrogen vehicles by automakers, particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, served as an effective delay tactic that slowed the transition away from internal combustion engines. Major oil companies like Shell and BP made splashy announcements about hydrogen investments and fueling infrastructure, yet these remained largely symbolic. Shell's "Hydrogen Network" consisted of just a handful of stations even years after announcements.

Meanwhile, automakers like GM heavily promoted hydrogen initiatives like Project Driveway, generating positive PR while maintaining their core ICE business. These companies knew that the fundamental challenges of hydrogen, including its energy intensive production, lack of infrastructure, and extremely high cost of fuel cells, made it impractical in the near term. Yet they used hydrogen's theoretical promise to argue against investing in more immediately viable technologies like battery electric vehicles.

This created a "vaporware" effect: the industry could claim to be pursuing clean alternatives while avoiding meaningful investment in technologies that could have disrupted their existing business model. The resources and attention diverted to hydrogen could have accelerated battery development and charging infrastructure years earlier. By the time automakers finally embraced EVs in earnest in the late 2010s, they had effectively delayed the transition by 20 years.