This article investigates the efficient robust design optimization of a five-phase permanent magnet (PM) hub motor for electric vehicles. Besides the requirement of high-performance, like high torque density, low torque ripple and efficiency, fault-tolerant operation capability are also considered in the design optimization. To ensure that the motor performance is not sensitive to the variations of manufacturing tolerances, robust design optimization is employed to the investigated motor. To improve the fault tolerant capability of the motor, the motor performances under fault operation are also considered in the optimization. A Fuzzy-based sequential Taguchi robust optimization method is proposed to improve the comprehensive performance and save computing time. The proposed method is efficient because it holds the advantages of Taguchi method, fuzzy theory, and sequential optimization strategy. The motor performance is improved significantly by using the proposed method. Experimental results verify the accuracy of the model used in this study.