Nowadays, leakage current and inverter losses, produced by adjustable-speed AC drive systems become one of the main interested subject for researchers on Electric Vehicle (EV) and Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) technology. The continuous advancements in solid state device engineering have considerably minimized the switching transients for power switches but the high dv/dt and high switching frequency have caused many adverse effects such as shaft voltage, bearing current, leakage current and electromagnetic interference (EMI). The major objective of this paper is to investigate and suppress of the adverse effects of a PWM inverter feeding AC motor in EV and HEV. A technique to simultaneously reduce the leakage current and the switching losses is presented in this paper. Based on a discontinuous space vector pulse width modulation (DSVPWM) and a modular switches gate resistance, inverter losses and leakage current are reduced. Algorithms are presented and implemented on a DSP controller and experimental results are presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.