a web performance best practice (for non-H2 sites) is to
    inline images into the HTML... and there are some auto-
    optimizing libraries that will embed SVG as <SVG> tags
    instead of as a data: URI...

When I worked on mod_pagespeed (a website auto-optimizer) we wouldn't have it touch SVGs at all because there are so many potential security issues there. (And it wasn't widely used enough to be worth it given the risks.)