The data on EVs is that maintenance (at least on the drive train + battery) is not an issue, excluding air cooled designs like the Nissan Leaf which were doomed from the start.
But hydrogen fuel cells are also expensive to maintain and have been a huge maintenance burden, as they're quick to fail with contamination (and lots of other factors), leading to hydrogen trains being replaced by diesel trains.
Hydrogen can be clean, but it isn't and won't be for the forseeable future for the simple fact that it would be way to expensive. Almost all hydrogen today is made from natural gas and much less efficient than powering an electric car from a gas plant. But even if hydrogen was produced with electricity, due to the low efficiency it would be much dirtier than an electric car (And we're entirely discounting hydrogen leakage, which is much more potent at heating up the planet than CO2).
Hydrogen can also be fast to refuel, but it takes much longer than gas and often requires a long "time-out" after the last refueling. Hydrogen fuel stations are also very unreliable. With current EVs, 20%-80% charging in 20 minutes is state of the art, which should make charging times mostly a non-issue when this is also available in most "cheap" EVs.
The manufacturing of H2 from CH4 is one thing that really bothers me about the whole concept.
We have CH4 cars today, and an infrastructure in place. It should be expanded and tbh it's a great fuel. The leakages are a problem but I think much of them can be fixed.
I had a Honda Civic Gx, (natural gas) and it was comfortable and very convenient while in Los Angeles. Road trips and camping sometimes sucked so we just rented for those. But there are already "natural gas" highways because so many trucks use it.
I think it's not so much "maintenance" in stuff you're expected to do, the issue is when something goes wrong, the repair infrastructure isn't great. I.e. yea, the motor doesn't go wrong as often and there are less fluids, no transmission. But say, there's an issue w/ suspension or even the specialized wheel/tires, Tesla is notoriously bad at fixing these (such as, of all ironies, Ford dealerships have a brisk growing business in fixing Teslas).
I don't know if things are better at Hyundai/Kia now that their EV business is growing but I would hope so since traditional auto repairs/dealer and parts networks should be one of their core competencies
For a while, tire shops wouldn't touch whatever Tesla had put on there. Whether it was actually specialized or there was some legalese w/ Tesla wheels that made them paranoid, I don't know. Drove friends who were Tesla owners nuts. That's recently changed, though, I think. I assume Hyundai/GM and other traditional car companies didn't do this.
Some of these issues are also true with EVs. I’m not sure where you live but around me chargers are very often out of order, or vandalized/stripped by drug addicts, or don’t charge at the advertised rates. It is far worse than what I gather the experience is for hydrogen.
I didn’t have maintenance issues other than minor ones, but I do have friends who had their EVs in the shop for several months at a time. Tesla was nice enough to provide replacement cars but I’ve not heard of months long issues for typical gas vehicles (outside of pandemic supply chain problems).
But hydrogen fuel cells are also expensive to maintain and have been a huge maintenance burden, as they're quick to fail with contamination (and lots of other factors), leading to hydrogen trains being replaced by diesel trains.
Hydrogen can be clean, but it isn't and won't be for the forseeable future for the simple fact that it would be way to expensive. Almost all hydrogen today is made from natural gas and much less efficient than powering an electric car from a gas plant. But even if hydrogen was produced with electricity, due to the low efficiency it would be much dirtier than an electric car (And we're entirely discounting hydrogen leakage, which is much more potent at heating up the planet than CO2).
Hydrogen can also be fast to refuel, but it takes much longer than gas and often requires a long "time-out" after the last refueling. Hydrogen fuel stations are also very unreliable. With current EVs, 20%-80% charging in 20 minutes is state of the art, which should make charging times mostly a non-issue when this is also available in most "cheap" EVs.