As one of the active safety technologies, stability control of vehicles has recently received great attention. In order to improve the handling stability of distributed drive electric vehicles under various extreme conditions, a direct yaw moment control (DYC) method based on a novel fuzzy sliding mode control (FSMC) is proposed. First, a linear 2DOF reference vehicle model as ideal value reference, a 7DOF vehicle model used for sideslip angle estimation, an electric-driving wheel model used to provide tire motion parameters based on CarSim platform are established. Then, FSMC is designed as the core decision-making layer of the control method to calculate the required additional yaw moment on the premise of estimating the sideslip angle. Four hub motors are allocated by the distribution method based on axle load proportion. Finally, under two typical working conditions, the four hub motors are allocated. Compared with traditional sliding mode control (SMC), the results show that FSMC can not only maintain vehicle stability more effectively under different working conditions, but also greatly reduce the occurrence of buffeting phenomenon, which has practical significance for engineering applications. INDEX TERMS Direct yaw moment control, fuzzy sliding mode control, lateral stability, active safety control strategy, distributed drive electric vehicle.