Although electrification had progressed rapidly in southern Germany, there were still many sidings in the areas of the stations and depots that did not have overhead lines. However, since one wanted to do without steam locomotives in shunting operations and also wanted to make their treatment facilities superfluous, one was looking for a different propulsion technology. Because the development of the diesel locomotives was still in its infancy, the decision was ultimately made to use an electric locomotive with batteries to bridge longer stretches that were not electrified.

In order to achieve sufficient battery capacity, the locomotive had to be relatively large and heavy and could only achieve a fraction of the hourly output of the E 60 that was already in use. However, since a large amount of adhesion is an advantage when shunting and the lack of power did not matter too much due to the low speeds, the advantages of the designed locomotive outweighed the negative.

Due to the high weight, six axles had to be used in order to keep the axle load at a tolerable level. The outer axles of both bogies were driven by nose-suspended motors and the middle axles were carrying axles. The body had a typical crocodile shape with large hoods containing the batteries, two driver's cabs in the middle and between them a machine room. At 400 kW, the transformer had a significantly higher output than could be delivered to the traction motors in order to ensure that the batteries were sufficiently charged in every situation. The locomotive's greatest weakness was the mercury rectifier, as it had to be re-ignited after an interruption in the power supply.

The five machines built were used at Munich station and in the immediate vicinity, where they performed well, with the exception of the weak point mentioned. After the war there were four remaining, which were in regular use until 1959 and were then replaced by shunting locomotives with diesel engines. Only the E 80 01 was used for two more years to test components for multi-system locomotives.