Also, wasn't this practice (i.e. engineering to fit design goals) what made Apple successful in releasing the iPod, iPhone, etc?

I am an engineer but welcome the perspective of designers and believe anyway that both need to work hand in hand.

In the case of driverless vehicles however, I am not sure the focus should overly be on design because this is a very hard problem that has yet to be solved, and maybe there was a way of designing a vehicle that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, while mostly focusing on the technical challenges that must be overcome to get us to autonomy.