schmoell:

From the headline:
>>Tesla has had OTA updates for years. Big established automakers still aren't adopting them at scale.
This is not correct. Major car makers (incl commercial vehicles) have OTA updates for years. Nowadays this feature is mainly used to fix bugs rather than retrofit open fire; but this is about to change. Except new services in the near future ...

That is addressed in the article, but the major point is that the majors aren't doing OTA patching over mission critical and/or safety related systems.  However, Tesla is doing exactly that and on several occasions rolled out patches in a few days.  The example given is when Consumer Reports brought the braking distance issue to Tesla's attention, Tesla quickly produced a solutions soon afterwards.  While this is admirable, the question remains of how did Tesla approve a rapid fix and know that new issues were not introduced.  If, on the other hand, Tesla was aware of the Model 3 braking issue, why did it wait until Consumer Reports brought the issue to the company's attention.  

That is one issue.  The other issue is will an OTA patch always solve the intended issue of a mission critical system.  At this time, the major automakers mitigate the potential risk by having the update occur at a dealership.  Large corporations tend to be risk adverse as a bad outcome can create a large liability for the company.  For example, look at the liability Volkswagen Group created with the diesel emissions issue.  It's modularity and component sharing approach to automobile production resulted in tens of millions of units being similarly affected with intentional defective emission systems software.  The company is still expending cash to cover the liability.  Fortunately, Volkswagen Group had the cash on balance sheet as well as the credit facilities to handle this potential existential liability.