A vehicle driving apparatus includes an inverter which drives a permanent magnet motor. The inverter includes a three-phase bridge circuit including a plurality of switch elements, a drive circuit connected to the three-phase bridge circuit, a control circuit connected to the drive circuit, and an abnormality detecting unit which detects abnormality of the inverter. The drive circuit includes a three-phase-short-circuit-forming circuit which causes three phases of the permanent magnet motor to form short circuits, an abnormality accepting terminal which accepts an abnormality signal output from the abnormality detecting unit, and a check terminal which accepts an active check signal for causing the three-phase-short-circuit-forming circuit to perform three-phase short circuit control.