I believe you're correct in that marketing did have a strong sway in the decision.
But the fundamental principle behind Google has always been engineering and especially for something as crucial as safety, they should have stuck with something bland and nonchalant imo.
The little Google cars (not the Lexus SUVs) were specifically designed for pedestrian safety in case of a collision, which can hardly be said about any other car, aside from Volvos.
That cars are designed with pedestrian safety taken into account? :)
I don't know if you've noticed but cars tend not to have noticeable front bumpers these days. Some cars also now have deformable bonnets, or bonnets that pop up if they detect somebody rolling on to them. (If you want to know how this works, you'll have to ask somebody else. I have no idea.) This is all to limit the damage cars cause to people when they hit them.
Euro NCAP has a section in its current ratings where they assess how good the car is at hitting people without injuring them too much, giving manufacturers of vehicles in many sectors an incentive to design with this in mind. See http://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-explai....
Interesting, safety is usually not mentioned from the articles I've ready about the driverless car design. The two articles below kind of skimp about safety. Well, hopefully you're right and safety within the design was (and in my opinion should) be the first goal in mind.
But the fundamental principle behind Google has always been engineering and especially for something as crucial as safety, they should have stuck with something bland and nonchalant imo.