The Cadillac Lyriq is arguably one of GM's most hotly anticipated vehicles of the 21st century and definitely among its best looking. Its handsome appearance is particularly unusual since the EV was designed by Cadillac's supercomputer, but look past the gimmicky anecdotes and the American luxury marque's first EV remains something special. On paper, it performs well against Tesla's Model Y too, and all of these factors have made people eager to try it out. Last week Friday, Cadillac announced that reservations for the new electric SUV would open the following day, on the 18th of September, but it didn't even take a few hours before they were all gone. It took 19 minutes.

The base model was revealed a few months ago with a surprisingly affordable entry point to ownership of $59,990, and when reservations opened on the weekend, all you needed to secure your place was $100. Well, $100 and some luck, as the deposit was easy enough to get but a build slot was not. Shortly after 10 AM on Saturday morning, Cadillac announced on its Twitter account that the launch model, or Debut Edition, had sold out, less than 20 minutes after the reservations had gone live. Thanks to the overwhelming interest, Cadillac's site had some technical issues that made it impossible for some prospective buyers to select their nearest dealer, with the end result being that these people missed out on a reservation.

This sort of thing is not uncommon with highly sought-after vehicles. But what if you missed out? Cadillac recommends that interested parties contact their nearest dealer "to discuss the plan to secure your Lyriq starting in the Summer of 2022." However, the global semiconductor chip shortage could yet push that date further back, and when Debut Editions were still available, certain color choices would also push deliveries back to the Fall of 2022. Whenever it does arrive, one thing is abundantly clear: getting people to part with gasoline engines is not so difficult - you just have to make it difficult for the buyer to get their hands on a good EV and demand will skyrocket.