-Recently, the trend of zero emissions has increased in automotive engineering because of environmental problems and regulations. Therefore, the development of battery electric vehicles (EVs), hybrid/plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs/PHEVs), and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) has been mainstreamed. In particular, for light-duty electric vehicles, improvement in electric motor performance is directly linked to driving range and driving performance. In this paper, using an improved design for the interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM), the EV driving range for the light-duty EV was extended. In the electromagnetic design process, a 2D finite element method (FEM) was used. Furthermore, to consider mechanical stress, ANSYS Workbench was adopted. To conduct a vehicle simulation, the vehicle was modeled to include an electric motor model, energy storage model, and regenerative braking. From these results, using the advanced vehicle simulator (ADVISOR) based on MATLAB Simulink, a vehicle simulation was performed, and the effects of the improved design were described.