>Neither of those is likely to happen on the first trips to Mars.
It doesn't have to happen on the first trip. They could send the truck to Mars on one of the current rockets and just have it sit there until they're ready to use it. It's an electric vehicle. There's plenty of solar exposure on Mars, they can charge it over the course of weeks if they needed to, even though they don't, and the durability would guarantee that it could serve up there for years. It could literally just sit there and do nothing for the 3-5 years it takes them to build out a basic hab and a dock for it.
If we are ruling it out on the first few trips, then we are probably ruling it out for at least a decade or probably longer. I would bet the Earth version of this truck isn't going to go a decade plus without being redesigned by Tesla.
All your points about the benefits of an electric vehicle apply just as well to something lighter that is specifically and only designed for travel to and on Mars.
What? What makes you say that? SpaceX literally shot Elon Musk's car into space to do nothing but float towards Mars. The entire point is prove that their rockets can shoot something that weighs a metric ton out to Mars safely. They don't want to send something lighter that's only designed for travel to and on Mars. They want to send something from Earth to Mars that proves they can send out the materials and supplies to colonize the planet quickly.
It doesn't have to happen on the first trip. They could send the truck to Mars on one of the current rockets and just have it sit there until they're ready to use it. It's an electric vehicle. There's plenty of solar exposure on Mars, they can charge it over the course of weeks if they needed to, even though they don't, and the durability would guarantee that it could serve up there for years. It could literally just sit there and do nothing for the 3-5 years it takes them to build out a basic hab and a dock for it.