I'd say there are two types of exploration: Long-range exploration, and short-range exploration.Every ship build I find when looking for exploration builds have as big a jump range as possible. Forgive me if I am being a complete tool, but isn’t the point of exploration to explore as many systems as possible, and therefore not need long jump range?
Long-range exploration is when you see an interesting system somewhere really far (usually thousands of LY away) and want to get there with as few jumps as possible / as fast as possible. You aren't really all that interested in the in-between systems.
Short-range exploration is more meticulous, where you want to get first discovery of every single system near you (quite often near your fleet carrier).
Rather obviously the first type benefits a lot from extreme jump ranges.
(Very large jump ranges also sometimes allow reaching systems that are very far from nearby systems, as well as jumping over gaps that are extremely sparse in star systems, which helps in getting to places.)