Abstract This paper proposes a robust gain-scheduled H ∞ controller for lateral stability control of four-wheel-independent-drive electric vehicles via linear parameter-varying technique. The controller aims at tracking the desired yaw rate and vehicle sideslip angle by controlling the external yaw moment. In the design of controller, uncertain factors such as vehicle mass and tire cornering stiffness in vehicle lateral dynamics are represented via the norm-bounded uncertainty. To address the importance of time-varying longitudinal velocity for vehicle lateral stability control, a linear parameter-varying polytopic vehicle model is built, and the built vehicle model depends affinely on the time-varying longitudinal speed that is described by a polytope with finite vertices. In order to reduce conservative, the hyper-rectangular polytope is replaced by a hyper-trapezoidal polytope. Simultaneously, the quadratic D -stability is also applied to improve the transient response of the closed-loop system. The resulting gain-scheduling state-feedback controller is finally designed, and solved utilizing a set of linear matrix inequalities derived from quadratic H ∞ performance and D -stability. Simulations using Matlab/Simulink-Carsim® are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller with a high-fidelity, CarSim®, full-vehicle model. It is found from the results that the robust gain-scheduled H ∞ controller suggested in this paper provides improved vehicle lateral stability, safety and handling performance.