Toyota has recently given the world the most amazing gift in the car industry’s history. The hydrogen-powered, zero-carbon-emission Mirai comes complete with thousands of newly-released patents so others can get in on the act.

Strictly speaking, it’s not correct to call the Toyota Mirai ‘zero-emission’. Glance at the exhaust pipe on a cold day and you’ll clearly see gas escaping. But that gas is water vapour; nothing more toxic than what rises out of your own kettle.

This is a watershed moment. A car that, even in its first production guise, can cover more than 300 miles on a tank of fuel, takes just a few minutes to completely refill the tank (or two – the Mirai has a linked pair of them), but emits no harmful gases or particulates. This is a big deal.

And yet it’s somehow not as big a deal as its makers’ decision to release more than 6,000 hydrogen power patents built up over the last 23 years, allowing potential rivals a shortcut into building their own hydrogen cars. After hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and more than two decades, that’s a big giveaway.