Well, hot reload of code is not enabled in Node.js because it is so easy to accidentally end up with memory leaks or multiple copies of objects that aren't being garbage collected. Node.js is all about making your apps incredibly fast, not leaky.
In a production environment, you are likely to have multiple production servers serving the requests and a load balancer like nginx on the front. Using Forever or PM2 is totally sufficient in my opinion. They monitor your app and restart the server whenever it crashes. This reload time may be somewhat significant if you are doing some heavy task on boot-up. But you shouldn't worry as you already have another server processing requests. So, your app should function as normal.
I would suggest you to look at how you guys can create a distributed app with multiple servers serving the requests. This kind of arrangement along with Forever/PM2 is sufficient, imo.