This paper addresses the fault problem in distributed-four-wheel-drive electric vehicle drive systems. First, a fault-factor-based active fault diagnosis strategy is proposed. Second, a fault-tolerant controller is designed to reconstruct motor drive torque based on vehicle stability. This controller ensures that the vehicle maintains stability by providing fault-free motor output torque based on fault diagnosis results. To validate the effectiveness of the fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control, SIL simulation is conducted using MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim. A hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation platform with the highest confidence level is established based on NI PXI and CarSim RT. Through the HIL simulation experiments, it is shown that the proposed control strategy can accurately diagnose the operating state of the motor, rebuild the motor torque based on stability, and demonstrate robust stability when the drive system fails. Under various fault conditions, the maximum error in the vehicle lateral angular velocity is less than 0.017 rad/s and the maximum deviation in the lateral direction is less than 0.7 m. These findings substantiate the highly robust stability of the proposed method.

To improve the handling stability of distributed drive electric vehicles, this paper introduces an electronic differential control strategy based on the stability criterion of the phase plane method. The strategy first plots the distributed electric vehicle’s center of mass side angle and center of mass angular speed on the phase plane, and then it analyzes the vehicle’s stability under various working conditions to determine the parameters that ensure the stability performance. Subsequently, an adaptive fuzzy control strategy is employed to achieve fast and accurate distribution of the torque to each wheel, thereby enhancing the vehicle’s stability. A joint simulation platform is constructed using MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim. A comparison with the traditional electronic differential strategy demonstrates that the proposed distribution strategy based on phase plane stability exhibited excellent stability.