This is simply not practical out side of large urban areas in the US. Not only is distance a factor but also weather. No one is going to be riding an Ebike in 10° winter weather, and a lot of people commute 60+ miles a day.

Not to mention that public transportation in a lot of areas can be... Let's just say perceived as unsafe.

Hydrogen (by itself) is as clean as it can be. The byproduct is water.

Hydrogen requires about 4 times the input electricity per mile driven than electricity for battery electric cars. That’s why it’s so much more expensive and almost no one uses it. And the fueling infrastructure is crazy expensive.

Personally, I think if we do have hydrogen cars in the future, hydrogen cars should require a plug and an enlarged lithium battery (say, 10kWh at least). Otherwise we’ll need to produce FAR more electricity than with battery-electric cars and consumers will be on the hook for far, far higher use costs.

> Hydrogen requires about 4 times the input electricity per mile

Why does this matter?

Producing it is a little different though (not necessarily, but most of the time).

I agree, but it's not much different than producing the electricity required for charging EVs.

It requires approximately 4 times the energy to make and distribute hydrogen as charging an EV to go the same distance.

Public transit practical in small towns in Europe. How do we fix it in the US?

It's cultural. Americans perceive anything but a private automobile to be inconvenient and unsafe, even though stats show that private automobile use is actually fairly dangerous. Changing the culture will take a while.