In order to solve the problem of poor coordinated control between handling stability and economy of distributed drive electric vehicles, a model reference adaptive yaw moment controller based on Lyapunov stability theory and a quadratic programing wheel torque distribution controller considering energy loss of motors are proposed. A hierarchical control strategy is adopted. The upper controller is a model reference adaptive yaw moment controller based on Lyapunov stability theory. The adaptive control law is obtained by solving the Lyapunov function, and the stability of the model reference adaptive control system is proved. The upper controller provides additional yaw moment in real time according to the vehicle state, which can ensure the handling stability of the vehicle. The lower controller adopts the quadratic programing wheel torque distribution controller considering the energy loss of the motor to realize the real-time torque distribution to the wheel. Moreover, the weight distribution of stability and economy is dynamically coordinated based on the phase portrait. The double lane changing condition and fishhook steering condition are selected, and the simulation test of the proposed control method is carried out on the CarSim/Simulink joint simulation platform. The simulation results under the above two road conditions show that the vehicle has good handling stability when using Lyapunov adaptive control method. In addition, the coordinated decision control strategy can effectively reduce the load and energy loss of hub motor.