Torque ripple is a very essential index for evaluating the effectiveness of a switched reluctance motor (SRM). Many common design strategies for reducing torque ripples of a SRM are changing the excitation trigger angle of stator windings, delaying the cut-off time of winding excitation, adjusting the ratio of arc angle between stator and rotor, and changing the geometric shape of rotor. However, the output torque or the efficiency of the SRM may drop as the above design strategies are solely adopted. In this paper, a hybrid design model which is obtained by the Taguchi Method for optimally designing a SRM with lower torque ripple and higher efficiency is presented. A 12S/8P motor is taken as a study case, and the 3D finite element method (FEM) is applied to analyze the characteristics of the motor and optimize the design process. The results have shown that the proposed method can achieve the design goal of obtaining a high-performance SRM for light electric vehicle applications.