Engineers at Paccar Australia faced the challenge of integrating European and North American technologies into the DAF XG+ for the Australasian truck while getting the cocktail mix just right. . Tim Giles reckons the recipe seems to be working.

Visitors to the Brisbane Truck Show in May 2023 got their first glimpse of the DAF XG+, an adaptation of the top- of-the-range prime mover for DAF in Europe, including the fitment of a 15L engine, rated up to 492kW (660hp). Now on the Australasian market, it is a truck that in some ways harks back to a previous generation of trucks while also demonstrating interesting future possibilities for trucks not only Down Under but worldwide.

This new model is powered with a Paccar PX15, which is, in essence, the Cummins X15D engine – part of the fuel-agnostic engine platform announced by Cummins back in 2022, featuring a common engine block with the ability to be fuelled by diesel, hydrogen and gas combustion.

Getting a chance to drive this new model was an exciting prospect. It could well be the Australasian truck driver’s dream solution: a comfortable, spacious and well-designed European cabover prime mover, but with a North American- designed engine, with all of the caché of US iron.

This truck is a genuine Australian DAF, a major step forward for a truck brand that has been hamstrung by its lack of a high-displacement engine in the Australasian market.

The question on my mind when climbing up into the cabin of the XG+ for the test drive was not whether this truck would be any good … The DAF brand does not design bad trucks, Cummins does not make bad engines, and the Paccar organisation has had a long history of integrating various elements of a truck from different sources for many years.

This is just the latest challenge for the engineers at Bayswater in Melbourne, Australia. Yet again, they have come up trumps with something that has all the European comfort drivers like, plus it has that famous Cummins torque rise available under the driver’s right foot.

Importantly, it sounds right; there is no distant murmur of a diesel engine in the cabin that one would expect from a top-of-the-range European prime mover. The engine noise is not obtrusive, but it does make enough noise for you to hear that familiar engine note you expect from the traditionally red engine … which in this instance is painted black.

What Paccar has done is to bring a disparate collection of elements available to them as a company and turn it into something the Australasian truck market has been looking for, the ideal combination of European and North American technology as a complete whole.

There have been attempts at this in the past, which have had mixed results. The Iveco Powerstar being one of the most obvious examples, designed to create a European cabin with a conventional bonnet and a choice of European or North American driveline.

The aspect of the design that surprised me was that Paccar is using an engine out of the North American tradition and coupling it with a transmission straight out of the heart of the European trucking tradition: the ZF TraXon, which is one of the standard AMTs used in Europe.

The solution Paccar has come up with is to customise the interface between the engine and the transmission. Instead of using the Cummins ECU to control the X15D, Paccar developed its own ECU to control the engine from the truck’s CANbus directly.

Design considerations

With all of these changes, it was interesting to climb into the cabin and experience just what this melting pot of philosophies can bring to a truck. So, the question, can the two world views coexist side by side? Can DAF replicate the kind of fully integrated system used in the European truck while introducing an engine from a different continent’s trucking philosophy?

The essential answer is, of course, yes. The engineering teams based in Bayswater and at DAF HQ in Eindhoven in the Netherlands have managed to come up with a solution that is practical and effective.

“DAF took the opportunity to optimise their new truck around a new European truck dimension law,” explains Ross Cureton, Paccar Australia’s director of product planning. “It basically allowed the prime movers to get longer. They actually completely changed the cab structure.

“They did it for a few reasons. They still had to maintain the turn circle, but the length wasn’t so much the driver; whereas, in Australia, it still is. In Europe, it was about aerodynamics and reducing fuel consumption. The other key piece of tech legislation, which was coming, was direct vision to improve how well the driver sees out of the thing.”

Regarding the aerodynamic performance, the key difference is the radius on the front corners of the cabin. It is much larger, and then tapers outwards, only getting to full width behind the door. The most efficient design uses digital mirrors, but there are also traditional mirrors as well. It seems the digital versions are a step too far for Australia – at this point.

“We saw an opportunity for a 15L, but the key was, could we get the kind of fuel efficiency improvement DAF had got with the 13L, or would it undo all their good work?” says Ross. “They had built a completely new cab factory, and the project cost all up about A$1 billion [about $1.17 billion].”

It’s a rigorous internal process for the development of any truck with the DAF name. During the process, the engineers in Eindhoven working with the new engine were concerned about the level of turbo whistle it produced. The Australian team had to explain to their colleagues that Australasian truckies would expect to hear that familiar sound in their truck.

Driving Experience

The big question for me driving the truck out on the road was probably something along the lines of, ‘Is it a real Cummins?’ The familiar rapid torque rise in the Cummins range is the element that creates the excitement drivers feel when driving a Cummins- powered truck. In European-engine trucks, the torque does not come in quite so rapidly, and acceleration is extremely smooth and unfussy. What would this engine feel like?

The answer is somewhere in between. Pushing down on the accelerator does stir it into action immediately. The engine note rises in the cabin, and the truck picks up speed in a controlled manner. This is not like some European set-ups, where the feel can be a bit doughy after driving something with an X-15 under the bonnet. The ZF transmission can clearly handle the torque coming through and has been tuned to give the driver that ‘just right’ feeling.

This engine does pass that test. It does sound American enough and the acceleration is also American enough, but comfortably mixed in with a state-of-the-art European-style feel and response.

The impression when climbing up into the cabin of the XG+ is deceiving. It actually looks like quite a tall cab from the ground, but in reality, there are only three steps up to the driver’s seat. After settling into the seat, the main impression is how good the visibility is around the truck. The cab is relatively high, but the windscreen goes very low to maximise what the driver can see.

This impression is further enhanced by the side-view system on a display high up on the passenger-side A-pillar. The screen shows an image that goes around the front of the truck but also down the side by the passenger door. It can be a little confusing at first, but once the driver watches a pedestrian walking around the truck, it becomes clear that this single screen gives them a very clear idea of everything going on in that blind spot on the passenger side.

When it comes to the overall impression from the driver seat of the instrument panel, it is at once familiar and brand-new. The layout would be familiar to anyone who has driven any other European truck.

Long-term solution

The XG+ also brings something else to the Paccar party, and that is a future solution for a problem that has been hanging over Paccar Australia for some time. The dilemma is the fact that the existing Kenworth cabover, the K220, is probably the last iteration of the famed series with us since 1971. Paccar needs a ready alternative to be waiting in the wings, if and when production of the K220 eventually ends. The XG+ is one of those trucks that may be able to fill that gap in truck showrooms around Australasia.

Currently, the XG and XG+ will only be available as a 6×4 prime mover. Still, the Paccar team is not ruling out an 8×4 model in the future, which would certainly be attractive to New Zealand operators.