Water, everyone knows, is the ultimate hydrator. It’s the only substance in the world that every living thing needs. But for those who want or need a little something more to keep their bodies going, a tech-laden water bottle could be the answer.
At CES in January, LifeFuels unveiled its smart bottle. The Innovation Award-winning product expands on its prototype, released in 2016, to include a technology interface. While the bottle lets users select and dispense FuelPods, a line of flavored nutritional drinks, into the water, a companion app can be used to track the amount of the drink a user has consumed and dispense FuelPods. (Each pod holds up to 15 servings, and the bottle fits three pods, according to the news release).
Users can also adjust the taste and strength of the drink through the app and also dispense the pods by pressing a button on the bottle. The smart bottle and FuelPod fractional dispensing technology is patented. It is also perhaps the most significant feature of the LifeFuels product, and one that isn’t replicated yet on the open market.
“Keurig and Nespresso and others are a single-pod serving, and what we have then is pretty fascinating to our audience, that we’re already working with in the beta test group, is they don’t have to do anything but press one button — it’s simple,” LifeFuels CEO and co-founder Jonathon Perrelli said on a panel at the CES FitnessTech summit. “We’re here for — the first word of the show is consumers — we’re all here to enlighten their lives, to provide them with products that they want to use, that they love and enjoy using, and so the fractional dispensing to us is key.”
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LifeFuels also pairs with wearables such as the Apple Watch and Garmin Watch and tracks exercise, providing insight into when and how much to dispense and drink throughout the day, according to the news release.
“We allow some magic to happen inside the bottle,” Perrelli said. “When we know more about each individual, we can actually better help that individual to have the right drink at the right time throughout the day.”
The LifeFuels bottle and platform is currently in beta but is expected to go on sale in the summer, the news release revealed. When it does, Perrelli thinks those who are typically early adopters of new technology will jump at the opportunity to get their hands on a LifeFuel bottle.
“We were here at CES in 2016, with another Innovation Award back then, with a prototype that really told the story of fractional dispensing in a portable beverage maker,” he said during the panel.
“But what we’ve done now is taken it to a level, I think, that’s more premium and a product that you can see someone that buys an iPhone…will want this because it not only helps you feel better and it helps you stay hydrated, it’s also taking data that you may not be utilizing from Apple Health or from your Fitbit or Garmin, and actually making sense of it.”