If you compare the range of a 25 year old EV with a new one, it's pretty obvious that technological advances played as much a role as "environmentalism." California wanted to phase out gas after the smog nightmare of the 80s, saw the cars got <100mile range, couldn't do it. Only now is it potentially practical.

Hydrogen has a ton of shortcomings still. Technology might improve some of those too, sure. But if 75%, say, of the most severe environmental impacts of cars are mitigated by EVs, leaving a much smaller-sized problem in their wake, the technological advancements will have to be proportionally even stronger and easier to overcome to make the market move on again. (Or if EVs never replace >80% of new gas vehicles or so... but if inertia against change is that strong, that's not a benefit for hydrogen advocates.)

Hydrogen cars from 40 years ago had the same problem. They were terrible cars with short ranges too. This has changed with newer technology.

The biggest advantage of hydrogen is that they also solve the most severe environmental consequences of conventional cars, just without creating new ones of their own. It is similar to how LED lightbulbs replaced CFLs, even though CFLs were seen as necessary to replace incandescent bulbs.

Just look at the development of RC cars, it's not environmentalism that brought up EVs, it's technical progress.

80's electric RC cars were slow and the battery ran out in 5 minutes. People who wanted power used ICE RC cars.

Then we got li-ion and LiFePo4 batteries and brushless engines. Now the cars are so fast that regular people need to use limiters when driving. You can get a electric RC car up to 80km/h with off the shelf parts easily.