The yaw rate of vehicle has a great influence on stability and safety. There is no effective control strategy used to restraining the disturbance. This paper focuses on the yaw rate control for four in-wheel independent drive (4WID) electric vehicles. A two layer control model (direct yaw-moment control layer and torque distribution layer) is presented to achieve the high performance control. In the upper layer, A direct yaw-moment controller based on Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) is built through carefully analyzing the control system. Then the deviation torque is calculated for the purpose of control. In the lower layer, an algorithm is designed to distribute torque to the motor drive systems. In the end, the effectiveness of the controller is examined using a driving simulator system.