As a supplement to the six-axle Dragon, Newag developed a four-axle locomotive from 2010, which was initially to be given the name “Elephant”. A variant with a top speed of 140 km/h for the direct current system and a multi-system locomotive with a speed of 200 km/h were planned. During development, it was renamed „Griffin”.

The locomotives comply with the current EU crash standards and have modern electronic equipment. The driver's cabs contain multifunction displays and cameras are used to replace the rear-view mirrors and monitor the area around the couplers. Siemens also equips them with the necessary equipment for running under ETCS Level 2.

As the first variant, the E4MSU was tested by PKP Cargo from 2013. This is a multi-system universal locomotive with a maximum speed of 160 km/h, but was only built once. The 200 km/h fast multi-system passenger locomotive E4MSP was not initially implemented. The pure AC locomotives E4ACU and E4ACP were also not implemented.

The DC universal locomotive E4DCU was more successful. From it, 30 locomotives were purchased by PKP Intercity and used as EU160. Derived from this is the E4DCUd, which also has a 380 kW last-mile diesel. The five locomotives ordered by Lotos Kolej were not taken over and instead leased to PKP Intercity and Orlen KolTrains. PKP Intercity finally ordered ten more E4MSP machines, which were initially not implemented.