You can't divide a hexagon into 6 regular hexagons, that would mean using triangular cells to subdivide the hexagon.
Which isn't to say that you couldn't tile the planet with triangles, but they point out that the consistent relationship between neighboring hexagon tiles is useful:
>Using a hexagon as the cell shape is critical for H3. As depicted in Figure 6, hexagons have only one distance between a hexagon centerpoint and its neighbors’, compared to two distances for squares or three distances for triangles. This property greatly simplifies performing analysis and smoothing over gradients.
As you noticed, you can't divide a hexagon into 7 regular hexagons either. But it's apparently close enough:
>H3 supports sixteen resolutions. Each finer resolution has cells with one seventh the area of the coarser resolution. Hexagons cannot be perfectly subdivided into seven hexagons, so the finer cells are only approximately contained within a parent cell.
I wonder if it has something to do with the number of hexes it takes to cover a sphere with? It seems to me like the larger hexes/pentagons are mostly just illustrative borders.
Which isn't to say that you couldn't tile the planet with triangles, but they point out that the consistent relationship between neighboring hexagon tiles is useful:
>Using a hexagon as the cell shape is critical for H3. As depicted in Figure 6, hexagons have only one distance between a hexagon centerpoint and its neighbors’, compared to two distances for squares or three distances for triangles. This property greatly simplifies performing analysis and smoothing over gradients.
As you noticed, you can't divide a hexagon into 7 regular hexagons either. But it's apparently close enough:
>H3 supports sixteen resolutions. Each finer resolution has cells with one seventh the area of the coarser resolution. Hexagons cannot be perfectly subdivided into seven hexagons, so the finer cells are only approximately contained within a parent cell.