Cowboy has added a new air quality navigation feature to its e-bike app which allows users to steer clear of more polluted areas. The software taps into data from the marvellously-named BreezoMeter, which claims accuracy down to a five-metre area.

When the Cowboy 3 was launched last year, the associated app was updated with four new features: auto-unlock, theft detection, crash detection and 'air quality'.

The Verge reports that the firm has made an update to the last of those so that users now have the option of choosing between the fastest route and the healthiest, plus a few options between (on occasions when fastest and healthiest aren’t one and the same).

"We are opening a new chapter for smart urban transportation with our Navigation feature,” said said Tanguy Goretti, CTO and co-founder of Cowboy. “We are the first e-bike manufacturer ever to include real-time air quality in the calculation of our route suggestions, offering our riders a healthier alternative for their way through everyday life."

Where most air quality data providers rely on physical monitoring stations, BreezoMeter also takes into account multiple other sources of air pollution information, such as traffic patterns, connected cars, satellite data, weather, active fires, smoke models, meteorological information and more.

By refining its algorithms with machine-learning, the firm reckons it can deliver the highest level of real-time accuracy.

Whatever the true accuracy of BreezoMeter’s data, the inclusion of traffic information in particular would appear to be a useful element for cyclists with motor vehicle fumes surely the most noticeable form of air pollution for those on two wheels.

For those who don’t have a Cowboy e-bike, we recently reported on a similar app for Londoners over on road.cc.