Elon Musk's secret: how a pizza slice ate the entire car industry?
Billions of dollars on research and development, ingenious engineering, and advanced batteries...?
Forget about that nonsense.
Sometimes the biggest revolutions on Wall Street actually start with a midnight craving.
John McNeil, former Tesla president, recently revealed in a podcast a story that explains exactly why Tesla left all traditional car manufacturers in the dust – and it all boils down to one word:
Easy.
When McNeil arrived at Tesla and closely examined their cars' digital purchase process, he almost got a fever.
The average consumer had to click the mouse no less than 64 times to buy one car.
64 clicks!
In those days, the system behaved as if it was trying to exhaust the buyer until they gave up on the pleasure.
Musk's reaction was as only he knows:
"How many clicks does it take to order Domino's Pizza?"
In those days, ordering a pizza required only 10 clicks.
Musk didn't think twice and issued an immediate order to his engineers: "Make it easy – like ordering a pizza from Domino's."
In the world of digital marketing and finance, there's an iron rule: every additional click you demand from the consumer is a 5-kilogram hammer shattering your conversion rates.
As the Tesla team began digging into the data to understand where those 64 clicks came from, an amazing and particularly infuriating fact emerged:
Over 40 clicks were dedicated solely to approvals, pop-ups, and legal notices related to loans and financing.
The company simply burdened the customer with unnecessary and annoying legal disclaimers.
There's no logical reason in the world why buying a car should be a harder and more exhausting task than ordering dinner – the engineers got rid of the invented approvals, and the result is that today a Tesla Model 3 can be purchased in just five clicks.
This move by Tesla did much more than just ease the buyer's finger –
Every alienated waiting room, every endless pile of papers, and every salesperson who applies psychological pressure to close a deal – all slow down the customer who wants to decide for themselves, as easily and quickly as possible.
Tesla simply removed the complexity from the equation, and through five simple clicks and a mindset of "how can I make this easier" – it gave its competitors a serious headache when it comes to car sales in 2026...
The next step?
Five clicks and an Optimus robot is on its way to your home?