This paper proposes an online gain tuning algorithm for a robust sliding mode speed controller of surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motor (SPMSM) drives. The proposed controller is constructed by a fuzzy neural network control (FNNC) term and a sliding mode control (SMC) term. Based on a fuzzy neural network, the first term is designed to approximate the nonlinear factors while the second term is used to stabilize the system dynamics by employing an online tuning rule. Therefore, unlike conventional speed controllers, the proposed control scheme does not require any knowledge of the system parameters. As a result, it is very robust to system parameter variations. The stability evaluation of the proposed control system is fully described based on the Lyapunov theory and related lemmas. For comparison purposes, a conventional sliding mode control (SMC) scheme is also tested under the same conditions as the proposed control method. It can be seen from the experimental results that the proposed SMC scheme exhibits better control performance (i.e., faster and more robust dynamic behavior, and a smaller steady-state error) than the conventional SMC method.