Okay, so here's a possible solution:
The early Mitsubishi i-Mievs in the UK (The ones which were part of the CABLED trail) seem to adhere to IEC 62196 (mode 1) charging, using the Type 1 J1772 connector.
If you look at the charging cable you got with the car, you'll notice that the cable itself is just a pass through of a standard 13A UK plug to the J1772 plug. There's no control box or portable EVSE on it. Big alarm bells there, so I thought it'd be worth checking the voltage across the pins at the J1772 end when the cable is plugged into the wall.
As I feared, it's always live -- 240V across N and L. That also means it'll always arc when you plug it into your iMiev.... but that's a different problem.
Anyway - the early cars appear to not be J1772 Type 1 compliant. They don't need an EVSE to work, just the J1772 connector wired to whatever you want at the other end.
UK Charging stations, the type 2 ones, require communications on the control pilot before they'll turn the relays inside them on. But I don't think the early Mitsubishi iMievs have anything connected back to the on-board charger for either PP and CP.
If I'm right, there's a solution: but it requires some DIY skill.
http://modularevpower.com/Active_Vehicle_Side_Control_development.htm -- Here's the Modular EV power J1772 active vehicle side control board. AVC1 and 2 I believe.
These boards are designed for EV conversion fans, to enable them to build EVs with off-the shelf chargers which talk nicely to J1772 charging stations.
But in this case, I believe early Mitsubishi i-Miev drivers should be able to use them to make their i-Mievs J1772 compliant.
Down side? I'm pretty sure it'll work, but you'll be stuck at 13A. Still, it does mean you'll be able to charge. And 13A charging is better than no charging, right!?
it's also possible to build a circuit using a couple of resistors and a diode, but I don't think it'd be as easy to implement as fitting one of these boards.
Thoughts? Comments?
I don't have an iMiev (only a Leaf and a Volt) but my friend just purchased a CABLED 2010 Mitsubishi i-Miev and we noticed it didn't want to work with Type 2 charging stations yesterday. So I started digging... and thinking.
As a side note: I used to own a Twizy (got rid of it after a short while because it wasn't reliable) and I built a J1772 adaptor box so I could plug the 13A TWizy into J1772 Type 2 units. It works a treat, using the two resistor, diode arrangement listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772#cite_note-brusa-16