This "race" is being fueled by oil giants who can reuse much of their infrastructure. The extraction of hydrogen is environmentally destructive just as it is for natural gas. The energy required for extraction is intensive, resulting in far overhyped claims of how clean hydrogen is as a fuel (this is "blue hydrogen", the kind most monied interests are pursuing). There is "green hydrogen" built from splitting water molecules, but that's only a clean energy if the energy we use to split the water molecules is itself clean.

Hydrogen is not a path to clean energy, it's a sideshow for an ostensibly-but-not-in-fact clean energy alternative by the oil and gas industry.