A novel rotor speed estimation method using model reference adaptive control(MRAC) is proposed to improve the performance of a sensorless vector controller. In the proposed method, the stator current is used as the model variable for estimating the speed. In conventional MRAC methods, the relation between the two model errors and the speed estimation error is unclear. In the proposed method, the stator current error is represented as a function of the first degree for the error value in the speed estimation. Therefore, the proposed method can produce a fast speed estimation. The robustness of the rotor flux-based MRAC, back EMF-based MRAC, and proposed MRAC is compared based on a sensitivity function about each error of stator resistance, rotor time constant, mutual inductance. Consequently, the proposed method is much more robust than the conventional methods as regards errors in the mutual inductance, stator resistance. Therefore, the proposed method offers a considerable improvement in the performance of a sensorless vector controller at a low speed. In addition, the superiority of the proposed method and the validity of sensitivity functions were verified by simulation and experiment.