No dumb question at all! Glad you asked.
We can make panels up to 40' long... That's not the limitation... We can also create very od shaped and dimensioned habitats. With demountable truck campers, we ran into a couple of challenges, especially when it comes to working with lightweight materials. The first challenge is the centre of gravity that needs to be far enough behind the front mounting points and camper jacks to prevent tipping over in various of situations. Any certified truck camper manufacturer needs to comply to that according to DOT. Can't imagine getting into a lawsuit after the camper tips onto a kid or car when sitting on the ground. There are lots of end users that use campers of the truck.
In other words: yes, in theory it would be easy to offer a longer cab over.... Instead we like to keep it safe and stay within some sound engineering/calculations.
I'm fully aware that others are offering longer cab overs..... They do it because people are asking for. We rather create a product that we can safely stand behind.
Why not just offer a bed extension like Scout and Tune do? goes out of the way when not in use and let you sleep N/S if wife requires it or if you are tall.
You mentioned 2 issues for not doing a N/S:
- long cab over being not good engineering wise. Bed extension solves this.
- small living area, a N/S would use too much of the living space. Bed extension solves this.
There is virtually no cons in offering a version with extension. Just put the fridge on the south side instead of north, use a retractable faucet, and voila, the bed has now full wide access and and room for slide to extend.
You are loosing a good amount of customers who are either tall, or need both people sleeping to have access without crawling above the other person, or just people who sleep with a kid or dog and need a larger bed. All of this for not implementing an easy low cost solution.