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TECH NEWS
Nothirst upright water bottle 1Upright cycling water bottle has an angled top to "maintain an aerodynamic position" while sipping, and it's crowdfunding on Kickstarter
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...
Anna has been hooked on bikes ever since her youthful beginnings at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit. As an avid road and track racer, she reached the heady heights of a ProCyclingStats profile before leaving for university. Having now completed an MA in Multimedia Journalism, she’s hoping to add some (more successful) results. Although her greatest wish is for the broader acceptance of wearing funky cycling socks over the top of leg warmers.
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31 comments
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.
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!'
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 
So have they created a problem for their solution?
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...
I really appreciate the "Easy refill thanks to the angular neck" as I've been having a lot of trouble using standard shape bottles
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.
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 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 strange protruberance on their lower back - looks like it might need medical attention.
Or the fact that one of their eyes appears to have just flown out of thier skull...
Back to you povkstone.
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.
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.
I'll have you know that I keep my skeleton moist all of the time.
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.)
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 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.
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.
They do look cool, trends always come back in.
Maybe this is why a pro teams not done this
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..
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 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.
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?
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.
Bidon doubles as bidet.
...unless it's pointing away from you.
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.
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.
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