Focusing on the Israeli market made a certain amount of sense. They positioned this as a sort of a patriotic project that would be transformative for a small country and they had the country's top leadership involved from the beginning. They were probably in a much better position to get what they wanted from government and local businesses than they would have been in the US. It's also a lot easier to build enough charging stations to cover any place a customer wants to go if your target country is very small.
Focusing on the Israeli market probably makes a lot of business sense, for the reasons you say. Parent commenter's point is that once you've made that (sensible) choice, there's no need, for that market, to focus on increasing the range between charges, because that market doesn't need increased range, that's not what will help you succeed in that market.
