Patent ID: 8680808

Claim:
A motor drive apparatus comprising: a plurality of motor drive parts including as many as “n” motor drive parts, each of the motor drive parts including a winding set of a motor and an inverter for supplying current to the winding set, “n” being an integer equal to or greater than 2; and a control unit configured to check whether failure is present with respect to each of the plurality of motor drive parts and control current supply to the winding set through the inverter in each of the plurality of motor drive parts, wherein the control unit is configured to execute as many as “m” failure detection processing with respect to each of the plurality of motor drive parts before the inverter starts the current supply to the winding set in each of the motor drive parts, with “m” being an integer equal to or greater than 1, and wherein the control unit is configured to start the current supply to each winding set of the plurality of motor drive parts at the same time after completion of execution of all the failure detection processing with respect to all of the plurality of motor drive parts.