A novel direct torque control (DTC) method based on sliding-mode-control (SMC) strategy is proposed for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) which is used in electric vehicles (EVs). In order to improve the dynamic response time and enhance the robustness performance against the external loading disturbances and motor parameter’s variation, a kind of SMC-based torque controller and speed controller are designed to regulate the torque angle increment and the speed respectively. The torque controller is designed based on a sliding mode controller with an asymmetric boundary layer to reduce the overshoot. Compared with other DTC methods based on space vector modulation (SVM) in the literature, the proposed DTC scheme adopts the asymmetric boundary layer SMC instead of the proportional-integral (PI) regulator. The simulation results have validated the effectiveness of the proposed SMC-based DTC method.