Abstract In order to achieve higher precise positioning of the throttle plate, an adaptive control strategy, which comprises a PID controller, a feedforword compensator and an adaptive nonlinearity compensator, is presented for the electronic throttle control system. Compared with the existing results on the electronic throttle control schemes, in this research the proportional-integral-differential gain coefficients can be determined according to the desired tracking transient performance and the adaptive nonlinearity compensator is derived for friction, limp-home and backlash. The theoretical proof and analysis show that the designed throttle control system can ensure fast and accurate reference tracking of the valve plate angle in the case of the effects of transmission friction, the return spring limp-home and gear backlash nonlinearity with uncertain parameters and external disturbance. Moreover, the simulation results on the test bench of electronic throttle demonstrate the capability of the proposed controller to achieve asymptotical reference tracking, while preserving the transient performance, like settling time and overshoot within the acceptance requirements.