In the latest edition of AmandaAcrossAmerica, Amanda Congdon meets up with Nate, a Minneapolis man who lives in his motor home, and pays very little to operate it. The RV has been modified to run on recycled vegetable oil from restaurants. It features a 100 gallon tank to hold the fry oil in addition to the standard 40 gallon diesel tank. The vehicle uses straight unprocessed oil with nothing but a a filtration system to clean out any residues. Nate starts up on regular diesel until the veggie oil warms up and then switches over. Before shutting down the fuel is switched back to diesel to make sure that no veggie oil is left in the fuel system to plug it up.

When he goes on a road trip he periodically stops at Chinese restaurants to fill up on veggie oil. Last summer Nate took a 2,800 mile round trip to Colorado on 50 gallons of diesel. The trip would have cost about $1,000 on straight diesel but only cost $150. One point that jumped out from the interview was that the EPA has declared it illegal to run a vehicle on vegetable oil. From their perspective the veggie oil has not been submitted for safety certification and is therefore illegal. Anyone using an uncertified fuel is subject to a fine of $2,750. So if you decide to run your vehicle on used Chinese restaurant oil, you should probably not put a big sign on your vehicle. Check out Amanda at AmandaAcrossAmerica.

[Source: AmandaAcrossAmerica]

A couple of years back fans of the GM EV1 electric car got very upset when GM decided to take back all the cars that they had leased. Someone even made a movie about it. There was a big uproar over the fact that the EV1s were the be crushed. However, not all of the cars were in fact destroyed. Some did survive. One then resides in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. On another edition of AmandaAcrossAmerica from Madison, WI, Amanda Congdon discovers the second life of another EV1. GM removed the controllers from some of the cars and donated them to universities for research work.

One of the schools that received an EV1 was the University of Wisconsin - Madison. The engineering school there has completely refurbished the EV1. Glenn Bower and his students have replaced the power-train and batteries, developed new control software, and calibrated the vehicle. They use the car for giving students practical experience in electric and hybrid vehicle development. In addition the engineering department at the school is working with Ballard on testing their new control systems that will be applied to fuel cell vehicles in development at Chrysler and Ford. Check out the video at AmandaAcrossAmerica.com.

[Source: AmandaAcrossAmerica.com]

While still in Madison, WI Amanda Congdon visited the PrairieFire BioFuels Co-op. The co-op, like many others springing up around the United States, is a member owned group working to build infrastructure and create access to biofuels for drivers. The co-op is located in a former garage near downtown Madison. Along with selling biodiesel to members (at a discounted price} and non-members, they also provide support for doing biofuel conversions on older diesel engines as well as helping drivers buy suitable diesel vehicles.

The co-op is currently selling B100 fuel to members at $3.33/gal and $0.35 more for non-members. Amanda met with the owner of a late '80s Mercedes 300SD that is currently running on B100 and saw that it emitted no soot and smelled like french-fries. She also met with Sean Michael Dargan, one of the founding members of the co-op who provided a tour of the facility. You can see the video at AmandaAcrossAmerica.com.

[Source: AmandaAcrossAmerica]

On another recent episode of AmandaAcrossAmerica, Amanda Congdon interviewed Mayor Dave Cieslewicz of Madison, WI. During the interview the mayor discussed the efforts that Madison and many other cities around the country have taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since the federal government is currently ignoring the problem, local municipalities are taking the initiative by changing things at a local level. Last year Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle started trying to get local municipalities to sign on to the Kyoto protocol and Madison was the fifth city to do so. There are now over 300 cities and towns supporting the initiative.

Madison has provided a fleet of bicycles for city employees to get around town on. When employees need to go somewhere, they can just check out a bike and go. This can work really well in a city like Madison that has a fairly contained downtown area where cyclists can get around without too much difficulty, at least in warmer weather months. The mayor even has a dedicated bike to get around on.

The city has also allocated funds to purchase diesel electric hybrid buses for use by the Metro Transit System. Madison will be taking delivery of the first five buses in early 2007. They have also reached an agreement the University of Wisconsin-Madison to use three of the first five buses on routes around the campus area in the central part of town. The hybrid buses are expected to provide a 35% improvement in fuel economy and a reduction in carbon monoxide emissions from 3 grams per mile for diesel to 0.1 gram per mile for the hybrid.

[Source: AmandaAcrossAmerica]

Amanda Congdon and crew are now about halfway across the country in in their AmandaAcrossAmerica trek. They recently visited the Ford Kansas City assembly plant in Missouri to see where their ride was born, toured the facility ,and talked to the people who build the Escape. All assembly plants have a final inspection area, and generally an extra audit area. In the audit area, the inspectors take a sample of the vehicles from the final inspection and do a more thorough check to look for other issues that don't get check on every vehicle. When a problem is found in audit they go back and start checking the other vehicles for the same problems.

Since the start of production, all the Escape hybrids have been going through the audit which the Ford plant labels the "Quality Enhancement Area". Due to all the new technology on the hybrid they have been checking every single vehicle before it leaves the plant. According to the inspector, after 2 years of regular production they are now getting down to about the same number of problems with the hybrids that they have on the regular Escapes. The video also shows a plant employee riding around the plant on a bike. This is actually pretty common in car-maker manufacturing facilities. These plants tend to be huge sprawling facilities and it can take awhile to walk from one end to the other. You can check out the plant tour video here or subscribe to the whole video blog series for free here.

[Source: AmandaAcrossAmerica]

Currently Amanda Congdon and her compatriots Mario Librandi, Rob Librandi and Emily Golub are nearing the end of their second week of a five-week journey across America in a Ford Escape Hybrid. AutoBlogGreen had a chance to talk to Amanda as they meandered from Greensboro, North Carolina into Tennessee.

AutoblogGreen: What was the goal of this trip and what prompted you to do this project?

Amanda Congdon: We knew that we wanted to videoblog across country, and we're very environmentally conscious, so it seemed perfect to partner with an environmental organization like the Natural Resources Defence Council and EnvironmentalCountdown. The goals of the trip are to raise awareness about the environment and about "citizens" or as Jeff Jarvis was saying "network journalism". Those are the two things we're focusing on when we meet with people along the way.

Read the rest of the interview after the jump.