[1] Work on designing a new family of Polish locomotives able to pull trains at speeds higher than 125 km/h, started in the 1970s.

The locomotive was designed in Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Pojazdów Szynowych (Rail Vehicles Research and Development Centre) in Poznań.

The locomotive was intended to be built with western parts, but severe financial restrictions caused many modern solutions to be abandoned.

This was done in order to familiarise engineers with this type of locomotive before raising maximum allowed speed on the Warsaw–Gdańsk line.

[5] In August 2021 PKP Intercity issued a request for proposal to comprehensively modernise all 46 locomotives, bringing them up to modern standard, a.o.

replacing DC traction motors with asynchronous ones and motor-generator sets with switch-mode inverters, modernising bogies, and preparing the locomotives for the installation of ETCS.

Another important change during the production process is installing air conditioning system (since locomotive number 40).

For a long time PKP worked on bringing all machines to the same standard as the last two locomotives (046 and 047) brought into service in January 1998.