Meet Teal, the Autonomous Consumer Drone that Can Fly 85 MPH

The Teal consumer drone is Ricky Bobby fast. When orders ship out in December, people will be able to take it out of the box and fly up to 85 mph. At those speeds, it could be a racing drone — but one that shoots 4K video and takes off and lands autonomously.

And that’s just the beginning. In addition to the blazing fast speeds, Teal is able to handle 40 mph winds and stay in the air for 20 full minutes with the endurance battery. The whole thing can be controlled with either a remote or a phone, and its 4K video interface and autonomous systems are controlled by an NVIDIA computer processor in it. Say goodbye to the days of consumer drones solely optimized for racing, spying, or shooting video, because Teal can do all three.

Teal can already do pretty much whatever you could want a drone to do — and if it doesn’t, 18-year-old inventor George Matus has made it so any owner can program custom applications for the drone on the fly. Machine learning, autonomy, image recognition: you name it, Teal can do it, thanks to a processor with the power of a mini home computer.

Teal is a reality because Matus chose to forego the college experience after he graduated high school. Instead, he took some investment money from Trump supporter, serial investor, and Gawker-killer Peter Theil, The Verge reports. It’s nice to see that not all of Theil’s money goes to squishing media companies like baby fledgling birds; without it, we wouldn’t have Teal.

The only catch is, all that power doesn’t come cheap. Teal deliveries will arrive before Christmas this year and will cost consumers around $1,299.

Preorders started today, and you can put your name on the list at the Teal website — the first 500 orders get the Signature series, which isn’t really explained, but sounds enticing.