With the development of new energy vehicle electronic control system and the increase of complexity and integration, the vehicle fault protection strategy has become an important part of software development. However, the test was difficult and risky, especially for motor control system. Traditional bench and real vehicle tests always could not meet the actual requirements. The motor control system fault protection strategy and its hardwareintheloop (HIL) test scheme were introduced. Combined with the dSPACE simulation system, a signallevel HIL simulation test platform was built for the vehicle motor control unit. Realtime simulation was performed for different faults of the motor. By analysis of the test results, the correctness of the motor controller fault protection strategy was verified, and the superiority of the HIL test method was proved.