Permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM) are widely used in the automotive industry for electric vehicle (EV) and hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) propulsion systems, where the trend is to achieve high mechanical speeds. High speeds inevitably imply high current electrical frequencies, which can lead to a lack of controllability when using field oriented control (FOC) due to sampling period constraints. In this work, a comprehensive discrete-time model is fully developed to assess the stability issues in the widely used FOC. A speed-adaptive control structure that overcomes these stability problems and extends the speed operation range of the PMSM is presented. Also, a numerical methodology from which the maximum operating stable frequency can be computed in advance of any experimentation, is developed. All contributions are accompanied and supported by numerical results obtained from an accurate MATLAB/Simulink model.