Abstract: Interior permanent magnet (IPM) synchronous motors are widely used in electric vehicles. This
paper investigates the driving control of IPM motors with Hall position sensors to realize large torque starting,
wide range of speed regulation and high efficiency operation. The driving control strategy combines the
improved Hall prediction algorithms with the first-order Hall position algorithms. Simulation and experimental
results show that the maximum error of rotor position detection is less than 0.3 rad using the proposed strategy
when the motor starts. The proposed flux weakening method has a better robustness compared with the
traditional flux-weakening control. The motor efficiency is increased by 1% compared with that of the zero
quadrature axis current control, when using table look-up control strategy and average-voltage dead-time
compensation method.

Key words: electric vehicles, interior permanent magnet (IPM) synchronous motors, rotor position prediction,
speed regulation, operation control