A direct yaw moment control of a four in-wheel motor independent drive electric vehicle is proposed. The advantages of this kind of vehicle are exploited by designing an optimal torque vectoring controller. The torque distribution computation coincides with the resolution of an optimization problem, which is carried out with the use of gradient method. Three different cost functions are taken into account to formulate the optimization problem. A yaw moment control is carried out with a Model Reference Adaptive Control. Numerical simulations show that satisfying result are obtained in terms of yaw rate reference tracking and torque distribution curves for common test scenarios like J-turn, single and double lane change. © 2018 IEEE.