In 2006, a consortium consisting of Marubeni Corporation, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Hitachi was awarded a contract from the Bureau of High Speed Rail (BOHSR, now part of the Railway Bureau) of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) of Taiwan to supply the systems and build the depots for the Taoyuan Airport MRT project.

Under the contract, Marubeni was in charge of overall project coordination, signalling communications and trackwork; Kawasaki responsible for rolling stock; and Hitachi for transformers.

[8] The 2000 series was designed with identical car body structure and operating performance as the 1000 series and hence like the 1000 series, features an aerodynamic front made of a fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) bonnet with an emergency detrainment door that folds outwards as a ramp, a stainless steel car body, plug doors to reduce noise and exterior LCD displays to denote the nature of the train service and the stations served.

[6] The only significant difference in the exterior is the livery, where the trains feature a purple color to denote its designation as an Express train instead of the blue of the Commuter 1000 series; the purple color evokes a flying Taiwan whistling thrush, which symbolizes "connecting the world".

Much like the 1000 series, LED displays above train doors and triplicated vertical stanchion poles are provided.