Permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) are applied in high performance positioning and variable speed applications because of their enhanced features with respect to other AC motor types. Fault detection and diagnosis of electrical motors for critical applications is an active field of research. However, much research remains to be done in the field of PMSM demagnetization faults, especially when running under non-stationary conditions. This paper presents a time–frequency method specifically focused to detect and diagnose demagnetization faults in PMSMs running under non-stationary speed conditions, based on the Hilbert Huang transform. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proven by means of experimental results.