Developed by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche on Hilter's orders for the Russian campaign the Elefant was a development of the cruder improvised designs of 1941-42 and the later, but still defective, Marder designs. As the name indicates the base chassis was created from the Porsche Tiger I prototype with new tracks and an all-steel wheel arrangement of three twin bogies on side sprung torsion bars driven from the rear sprocket. On top of this was fitted a 88 mm PAK 43/2 L/71 gun, the pure anti-tank '88' manufactured by Krupp from 1943 was possibly the most effective anti-tank gun of the war. The gun was mounted to the rear of the hull and the longer barrel overhung the front. The gun was capable of 25° traverse and similarly limited elevation. A 200 mm front plant was fitted over the gun with thinner armour to the sides, rear and top.
The entire vehicle was 8.14 m long, 3.43 m wide and weighed 65-72,000 kg. Powered by two centrally placed 300 hp Maybach HL 120 engines it had a top speed of 18.75 km/hr (off road) and a range of around 135 km. The crew of six was divided between the fighting compartment (commander, gunner, two loaders) and an entirely separate front space for the driver and radio-operator.
The units were deployed at a company level, sometimes sub-divided into platoons, with infantry or tanks to protect the vulnerable flanks of the vehicles. On the attack the panzerjäger was a first strike vehicle while in defence they often comprised a mobile reserve used to blunt enemy tank assaults. Towards the end of the war the Allies proved the vehicles to be particularly vulnerable to air attack.
Ninety Elefants were manufactured in total at Nibelungenwerke in just a few months in mid-1943, far less than the comparable Marder marks. It was first deployed during the Battle of Kursk and performed very poorly, many broke down and they proved dangerously vulnerable to infantry. When they were recalled from Russia there was a considerable rebuild of the surviving fifty vehicles - thickening the armour with bolt-on plates, adding cupolas to improve vision, and adding gun-ports and one or two MG 34s as anti-infantry weapons. The problems with the fragile engines, hydropneumatic steering system and complex mechanics remained. It when on to serve in Italy in 1944 and the final units were involved in the Battle of Berlin.