During yesterday’s conference call about Tesla’s second quarter financial results, Elon Musk refused to answer a question from a financial analyst about Travis Kalanick’s, Uber’s CEO, recent comments that his company would buy 500,000 Teslas in 2020 if they are equipped with Tesla’s self-driving technology by the end of the decade.

The short conversation was very revealing. Here it is in full:

Adam Jonas – Morgan Stanley Hey, Elon, Deepak. First question, Steve Jurvetson was recently quoted saying that Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, told him that if, by 2020, Tesla’s cars are autonomous, that he’d want to buy all of them. Is this a real – I mean, forget like the 2020 for a moment, but is this a real business opportunity for Tesla, supplying cars to ridesharing firms, or does Tesla just cut out the middleman and sell on-demand electric mobility services directly from the company on its own platform? Elon Musk – Tesla’s CEO That’s an insightful question. Adam Jonas – Morgan Stanley You don’t have to answer it. Elon Musk – Tesla’s CEO I think – I don’t think I should answer it.

From Musk’s response, it looks like Jonas was spot-on. This leads us to believe Tesla is either working on its own ridesharing service or they might really be in talks with Uber.

Jonas’ question originated from comments made by Steve Juvertson at a conference on future technologies earlier this year. Juvertson is a famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist, early investor in Tesla and currently a board member of 2 of Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Tesla.

His exact words were:

Travis recently told me that in 2020, if Telsas are autonomous, he’d want to buy all of them. He said all 500,000 of estimated 2020 production, I’d want them all, but he couldn’t get a return call from Elon.

Couldn’t get a return call? Musk is a busy man, but I doubt a future contract potentially worth $20 billion didn’t get his attention, unless he is working on his own taxi or ridesharing app?

Regardless of its current legal troubles in certain markets, Uber is a company to take seriously. Despise being half Tesla’s age, the company created in 2009 is estimated to be privately valued at over $50 billion. In comparison, Tesla’s market capitalization currently sits at $33 billion.

We might have to wait a while if Tesla is waiting for its autonomous driving technology to be ready in order to launch a competing service to Uber. During the call, the company announced a delay for the release of their ‘Autopilot‘ update, which should be pushed to Model S owners in the next few months instead of by the end of July like previously announced.

But it would probably be worth the wait, combining ridesharing, electric cars and autonomous driving is expected to bring down the cost per mile of transportation by an order of magnitude.

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