It took two years to build the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, in Lithuania it took two days (on Minecraft).
Inspired by Elon Musk’s revolutionary Gigafactory - a first of its kind battery cell production facility in the Nevada desert- a community of enterprising young gamers in Lithuania have taken it on themselves to go one better. To replicate the Gigafactory in two days, instead of the two years the Nevada facility took to build.
And, having rolled up their sleeves and got stuck into this seemingly impossible task on Saturday, by Sunday evening they were setting off fireworks and cutting the red ribbon. And all this without one steel girder being lifted.
This you see, was no ordinary Gigafactory (if there is such a thing). It was built in Minecraft.
The project was the brainchild of 20 year old Darius Kniūkšta, who, as an avid fan of the inspirational innovations of Elon Musk, decided that it would be great to build a Gigafactory in Lithuania, (if only a virtual one for the time being).
And under the hands of project leader Žilvinas Lešinskas and the 100,000 strong community of Lithuanian Gamers, the Gigafactory was brought to virtual life on the territory of the Kruonis Pumped Storage Plant, which was lovingly replicated in Minecraft. The group hand-picked Kruonis – situated near the second Lithuanian city of Kaunas- as it would also be the perfect site for an actual Gigafactory.
As Kniūkšta explains, the motivation was not only one of fun: “I saw immediately that the subject of attracting Tesla Motors to Lithuania would be interesting to the young gamer community.” Indeed, the whole project was underpinned by a serious desire to attract Tesla to Lithuania. And the project has found support beyond the gamers. The current Prime Minister, Saulius Skvernelis, and Director of Invest Lithuania, Mantas Katinas, have both been vocal in their support.
Elon Musk took notice of the project with a cryptic-as-usual one-word tweet: “Minecraft” along with a photo of an underground tunnel. Multitasking as always, Musk probably expressed his appreciation for the creative project combined with a tidbit about his plans to dig a tunnel from SpaceX to LAX.
To date, the project, which is hosted online by Twitch video, has attracted 13,000 unique users and 60,000 video clicks, and is projected to be viewed at least 1 million times in its first month.
