It's an opinion piece. Toyota backed Hydrogen, not Japan. Nissan has been all in on electric. It takes a very long time to build supply chains for the volume that Toyota does . So Toyota has been bad talking electric until they get their ducks in order.
It's the same bullshit every company does. Steve Jobs famously stood in front of his audience proclaimimg his iPhone was the perfect size and larger phones were unwieldy the year before Apple released their larger iPhone.