When the Socialists lost a French mayor's office to the Greens last March, the ripple effect spread as far as the Tokyo offices of the world's biggest carmaker, Toyota Motor Corp. Toyota was preparing to start its first electric car-sharing experiment outside Japan in Grenoble, a 160,000-person city at the foot of the French Alps. The incumbent had promised to install security cameras at all 27 planned charging stations for Toyota's i-Road, a quirky three-wheeled electric scooter that the company says can slalom through curves like one of Grenoble's skiers.