Japan's wary about making their automotive industry critically dependant on Chinese industries. The Chinese already proved twice that they're willing to use supply chain dependency as political means to punish Japan, once with rare earth minerals and again recently with graphite in retaliation for the semi conductor exports ban.
And it's not just batteries. The supply chain of mineral mining, purification processing, to sub component manufacturing is dominated by Chinese companies. I think it's something like 98% of the global purified graphite needed for battery cathodes comes from Chinese refineries; everywhere else multiple times more expensive. For procuring one of the most common elements on the planet; carbon.
I suspect part of the reason why Japan not so hesitant anymore is because of the US Japan Critical Minerals Agreement covering cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel.
Maybe it's not the best place to ask in a sub-comment but I keep wondering, what's the big deal with hydrogen cars? They're not anything greener than electric (actually less, as you lose more in the intermediate steps), safety also has its question marks, range improvement is still on the theoretical side, gas stations have to be retrofitted anyway, mechanically they have as many moving parts as an ICE so it's actually a disadvantage... I mean okay we're researching, but today it still looks to me very far from better.
>mechanically they have as many moving parts as an ICE so it's actually a disadvantage
I'm not sure this is true. They're talking about hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles here, not hydrogen-burning ICEs. So a fuel cell (which I believe has no moving parts at all) converts hydrogen to electricity, and from there the rest of the drivetrain is basically like an EV. In effect, you're using a tank of hydrogen gas as a crappy battery that can only discharge.
>what's the big deal with hydrogen cars?
Oil companies like them because it means that they stay relevant: you can generate hydrogen from fossil fuels pretty easily, plus this keeps them in position as necessary for fueling your car: instead of having to go to a Chevron station for gasoline, now you go to that same station for hydrogen. You don't get power from your electric utility to run your car, which makes the oil companies obsolete.
It's about the supply chain and patents. Japanese companies have cornered the world in both -- if they get traction on these technologies, they are poised to profit much more than they would if say Toyota succeeds at selling full evs.
They never fully committed to ev or they intentionally ignored the development. Otherwise you would see low price Japanese ev flooding the market instead of the Chinese ev
