Many automotive oscilloscopes still use an analog trigger system based on comparators. This causes time and amplitude errors that cannot always be calibrated out, and that often limits the trigger sensitivity at high bandwidths.
Pico pioneered the use of fully digital triggering using the actual digitized data. This technique reduces trigger errors and allows PicoScopes to trigger on the smallest signals, even at the full bandwidth. Trigger levels and hysteresis can be set with high precision and resolution; and PicoScope's digital triggering, together with an optimized memory system, allows the capture of events that happen in rapid sequence.
Some digital automotive oscilloscopes only provide triggering in software, which means that you can sometimes never actually see the event you were hoping to use as a trigger.