I think you have hit on the reason, but are just having trouble internalizing it.
Cars are sold based on emotion - not logic. Big wheels look cool and that triggers the emotion. The car designers know that. They don’t care if that creates a problem - that’s for the engineers to fix!
And here I am going to disagree with Uncle Turbo - All this business about rolling resistance can be applied to ANY tire. Low profile tires aren’t any better for RR than high profile tires.