Upright is a sports water bottle that allows you to drink without having to rotate the bottle, and it’s currently being crowdfunded for on Kickstarter over here. Dutch start-up Nothirst has designed it with an angled bottleneck so you can maintain your precious aerodynamic position when taking a sip, while also keeping your eyes on the road.
Nothirst points out that cyclists currently have to angle their body to get a proper sip of whatever it is they’re drinking, saying this both partially obstructs their view of the road, and means a large portion of their chest is now creating drag. To avoid this, Nothirst reckons it has the solution with Upright.
Nothirst makes the bold claim that Upright can reduce your drag by a massive 35% compared to drinking from a bottle with a normal design:
“To achieve a good sip of water, all you need to do is squeeze your Upright,” says Nothirst. “The internal straw is just the right length to ensure no residual water is left in the bottle when you reach your next re-fill checkpoint.”
The unique design of Upright also means it won’t go too far if you accidentally drop it. “When you drop a regular bottle on a slanted surface, say, on the side of the road, it tends to roll away,” Nothirst points out.
Nothirst is selling the Upright bottle in two sizes, one with 750ml of capacity and the other with 1000ml.
The bottle can be disassembled in three parts for easy cleaning, plus it’s dishwasher safe.
By pledging 15 euros (about £13) for the Upright 750, you can save 30% off the retail price of 22 euros.
So far over £2,400 has been pledged of the £12,635 and there’s 23 days to go.
As always, all the usual Kickstarter rules and regulations apply which can be found here.
What’d you think? A gimmick, or should we all be using bottles like this? Let us know in the comments below as always…
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
31 thoughts on “Upright cycling water bottle has an angled top to “maintain an aerodynamic position” while sipping, and it’s crowdfunding on Kickstarter”
FFS
FFS
Since it’s an internal straw
Since it’s an internal straw design, there’s no need for the angled head…. just squeeze and suck the straw on a straight bottle. I’ve had a karrimor badged bottle that can do this for about 5 years.
Quote:
…unless it’s pointing away from you.
Yep. And as I’m pretty sure I
Yep. And as I’m pretty sure I rotate my wrist in the process of getting a bottle from bottle cage to mouth, not rotating the bottle will leave it pointing off to one side (presumably not aerodynamic) when it’s in the cage. I’m out.
Bidon doubles as bidet.
Bidon doubles as bidet.
I can’t help but feel that if
I can’t help but feel that if this was a real runner, then someone would have developed it for a pro team rather than rely on a kickstarter. So I’m out.
What a waste of plastic. How
What a waste of plastic. How about an alloy bottle with a cork bung with a hole for a straw. held in a cage on the handlebars, or even 2 mounted side by side?
But won’t it be less
But won’t it be less aerodynamic for 99.9% of the time e.g. when in the bottle cage?!?
This was my thought, surely
This was my thought, surely an aero shaped bottle would save you far more, even if it was areal inconvenience to drink, the 60-90 seconds you’d spend on your ride actually using it vs the hours spent riding with it.
Maybe this is why a pro teams
Maybe this is why a pro teams not done this
Personally I don’t drink much
Personally I don’t drink much on a bike and when I do I’m sat up having a chill. If I’m tucked last thing I’m doing is drinking..
How is this an innovation?
How is this an innovation? Bottles with angled heads were common in the 1990s. I had a purple one. I thought it looked cool. But then again, in the 1990s I thought purple-anodised chainrings looked cool.
bobrayner wrote:
They do look cool, trends always come back in.
This sounds so desperate –
This sounds so desperate – trying tto hard to pitch a weak idea….f the rider in their picture was wearing a more aero jersey they will save far more effort..
If the rider in the picture
If the rider in the picture also had wheels on their bike, that might help as well. Plus the rider is naked in that picture, that looks like just the bones & muscles of the body.
Feels a bit like L-shaped
Feels a bit like L-shaped cranks… The “angular neck” achieves nothing different to an angled straw, and water bottles with angled straws are a dime a dozen.
And if you’re serious about aerodynamic drinking, there are of course far more effective systems already in existence (e.g. hoses attached to aero bars.)
In that marketing graphic,
In that marketing graphic, why is the rider shown as a skeleton? And why is the skeleton all one colour except for the lower back vertebrae which are shown in the same colour as the bike? It’s a mess. Also, slightly ironically, the bike the skeleton is riding doesn’t have a bottle cage.
henryb wrote:
I like the non-aero position of the disjointed skeleton that demonstrates how useful the aero bottle is in not needing to adopt a non-aero position. Also, why stare at a blue dot?
It’s showing you that water
It’s showing you that water is delivered direct to the bones, right where you need it. (Except for the lower vertebrae, which MUST be kept dry in order to maintain stiffness and aid in aero positioning!) Trust me, I’m a doctor.
I’m more concerned about the
I’m more concerned about the strange protruberance on their lower back – looks like it might need medical attention.
Or the fact that one of their
Or the fact that one of their eyes appears to have just flown out of thier skull…
mdavidford wrote:
Back to you povkstone.
You only get the aero
You only get the aero advantage whilst holding or drinking from the bottle. Putting it in a bottle cage would negate that benefit. Also no bottle cage = the Holy Grail of aero and less weight.
henryb wrote:
Very good point on the missing bottle cage, but from my experience skeletons don’t need bottle cages as they don’t need bottles, they are way to dehydrated for it to matter.
Dhill wrote:
I’ll have you know that I keep my skeleton moist all of the time.
I really appreciate the “Easy
I really appreciate the “Easy refill thanks to the angular neck” as I’ve been having a lot of trouble using standard shape bottles
If you’re really going for it
If you’re really going for it isn’t your head slightly lower than your rear? I mean if they’re really worrying about the most aero way of rehydrating…
So have they created a
So have they created a problem for their solution?
Erm – the Camelbak
Erm – the Camelbak Performance was much simpler and has a bite valve as well as a straw to the bottom of the bottle 😉 It’s still available if you hunt around. I just cut the loop handle off the top 🙂 No neck bending or arm raising required 🙂
To be fair this could be the
To be fair this could be the next ‘queens award for innovation’ winner.. I mean if we didn’t know we needed a plastic stick to put our chains back on then how do we trust ourselves to know anything nowadays.
Plastic stick inventors be like.. ‘who’s laughing now eh!’
They’re going about this all
They’re going about this all wrong. If you skeletonise yourself to become super aero you wouldn’t have any leg muscles to propel you along and the water would just pour through you and end up on the road.