Traction control is an active vehicle safety feature designed to help vehicles make
effective use of all the traction available on the road when accelerating on lowfriction
road surfaces. TCS becomes increasingly important to maintain the driver's
controllability of the vehicle to enhance the driving experience under different road
conditions and avoid road crashes by correcting human errors. This paper utilizes the
usage of PID, sliding mode and super twisting sliding mode controllers with a
nonlinear observer to obtain traction control for electric vehicles. The results of the
simulation illustrate the success of the controllers to operate the vehicle at the desired
wheel slip ratio. When a sudden change occurs, a super twisting controller yields the
best control performance comparing to the other systems. A novel unified structure is
used to estimate tire forces by using a nonlinear observer. The independence of the
estimates from the vehicle tire model is the reason for the novelty of this structure.