In this paper, a new speed sensorless control based on an adaptive sliding mode observer is proposed lot the interior permanent magnet synchronous motor(IPMSM) drives. With using voltage equation only, the adaptive sliding mode observer was investigated. Since the parameter of the dynamic equation such as machine inertia or viscosity friction coefficient are not well known and these values can be easily changed during normal operation, there are many restrictions in the actual implementation. The proposed adaptive sliding mode observer applied to overcome the problem caused by using the dynamic equation. Furthermore, the Lyapunov function is used to prove the system stability included speed estimate and speed control. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is confirmed by the experiments.