This study presents a scheme to detect and isolate faults in over-actuated electric vehicles. Although this research work is still emerging, it already provides a view of the main challenges on the problem and discusses some possible approaches that can be useful to overcome the key difficulties. This paper intends to present a fault detection algorithm based on Unknown Input Observer (UIO). The residuals are built through the difference of signals between the measured outputs and the output estimations from the observer. The main idea is to detect fault in the electric motors and steering wheel actuator. The algorithm is presented and tested with some fault scenarios using the co-simulation tool between Simulink/MATLAB and the high-fidelity model from Carsim software.