> Has there ever been an example of that failing in history? I'm not sure you can find any historical situation that's close enough to this one to make a good analogy, especially because hydrogen isn't even a good fuel to start with.

I'd think Iridium satellite phone is a great example of this. Motorola spent $5B to setup a constellation of satellites to sell $3k phones. It failed. turns out spending a ton of money to create a market is a huge gamble and the market can move in unexpected ways.

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