If you prefer to ride your bike with a hard plastic water bottle, you can replace the current cap on a Nalgene, Camelback, or GSI water bottle with this solar-powered Sol Light 200 water bottle cap, and turn your clear or translucent water bottle turns into a bike night light. The solar light charges during the day in the sunshine while you are riding around, and the 4 bright-white LEDs at sunset shine into your empty or full water bottle turning it into a lantern. Sol Light makes the $20.00 LightCap 200 solar-light water bottle cap to fit any standard 2.25-inch diameter water bottle. The LightCap 200 has a NiMH rechargeable battery, a sensor that turns it off when it senses sunlight, and a waterproof on-and-off switch, so you can use it as a flashlight if you get a flat tire.
But of course, the questions associated with hard plastic water bottles is not about the viability of a solar light built into the cap but about the leaching of Bisphenol A (BPA) from these re-usable polycarbonate bottles. If you want to learn more about leaching plastic, you can read this. We carry in the shop the Soma Crystal PolyPro water bottles, which do not contain Bisphenol A, but the bottle is of a harder plastic, and I could never get it to deliver a really good slug of water at the top of a hill. Soma has improved the bite spout this year. So, I will try it again. I had the same type of experience trying to gulp water at the top of a hill from the non- BPA stainless steel Klean Kanteen. When climbing like a happy boat anchor in the California sun, I need to be able to deliver a stream of water to my sweaty self faster than the inflexible water bottles allow.
If you are bike racing or training, you probably ride with the soft, squeezable Specialized water bottles many road and mountain cyclists prefer, since it is harder to drink on the bike from a container you can't squeeze. (Look on the bottom of your favorite waterbottle, and see if it is stamped with the Specialized "S".) I don't have any leaching info on Specialized bottles. If you do, post a link. Feel free to post links and experiences you have had with good water bottles for endurance cycling that don't leach toxins. And if you use the Sol LightCap200, put up a post and let us know what you think.
Photos lifted from the Sol Light website.
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