Direct torque control (DTC) systems for open-end winding permanent magnet synchronous motors (OEW-PMSM) with common DC bus generate zero sequence currents (ZSC) and large torque ripple, resulting in increased system loss and poor operating characteristics. In this paper, a DTC based on five level torque hysteresis (FLTH) is proposed to improve the system performance. Firstly, an online calculation and selection strategy based on switch table is designed to suppress ZSC. By analyzing the composition of zero sequence voltage and using the double vector method to suppress it, the ZSC can totally be suppressed in theory, without affecting the system performance. On this basis, this paper proposes to add FLTH to DTC to reduce torque ripple. FLTH can not only effectively use many voltage vectors, but also reduce torque ripple. In the case study, the torque ripple rate has been reduced by 53%. Through simulation and experiment, the conventional DTC and the FLTH DTC are compared, and the results prove the validity of the proposed strategy.INDEX TERMS Direct torque control (DTC), open-end winding permanent magnet synchronous motor (OEW-PMSM), five-level torque hysteresis (FLTH), zero-sequence current (ZSC), torque ripple.