Abstract The unmanned wheeled electric vehicle is a weapon platform that draws significant attention in current and future battlefields, and research on its motion control is fundamental. This paper introduces the design of a 6×6 unmanned wheeled electric vehicle and discusses the motion control methods applicable to this vehicle. The electric drive system of this vehicle comprises six independent asynchronous motors and corresponding motor controllers. A comprehensive controller designed based on DSP connects the six motor controllers. As it is an experimental platform, the motion control algorithms are deployed on an onboard computer, which connects to the comprehensive controller. Using the Backstepping method, the kinematic control algorithm for the 6×6 unmanned wheeled electric vehicle is designed. The global asymptotic stability of the control system is proven through the Lyapunov function, and its control performance is verified via simulation experiments. Finally, the system is deployed and tested on the actual vehicle. Experimental results show that the motion control system designed in this paper enables the unmanned wheeled electric vehicle to achieve effective motion control. The control laws derived from the Backstepping method are relatively simple and have low requirements for the sampling period. In practical systems, output speed magnitude and rate of change must be limited to stay within allowable system parameters.