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"do Teslas apply OTA updates while the car is underway"

Even your cellphone doesn't update when it's 'under way', what makes you wonder a moving automobile will? If you hazard a guess as to how OTA's are applied to automobiles, I would guess it'll be in Parked, plugged in, and prompted to update by pressing an "Accept & Update" button.

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There are realtime kernels that can update the apps, the OS, and install a new kernel without dropping a beat. VisualWorks Smalltalk had a system for loading code into a shadow of the running class hierarchy, then atomically committing the code changes. If you defined some functions for the transformation of existing objects, you could start a transaction in one version, then finish it in another.

We keep forgetting that lots of "advanced" features were actually invented decades ago.

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