This paper introduces a novel intelligent controller for autonomous vehicles that incorporates fuzzy variable gain sliding mode control (SMC). The controller is designed to improve overall performance. The paper first outlines the dynamics of the vehicle. Next, a variable gain sliding mode control is designed to accurately track the desired vehicle speed. To address uncertainties and instability in sliding mode control, the controller’s time-varying gains are adapted and optimized using T-S fuzzy logic. The stability of the control system is validated using Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control method. The simulation results show that the proposed method has the advantage of accurately tracking the desired vehicle speed and overcome the problem of instability in SMC and the effects of uncertainties compared to the classical method and the conventional sliding mode control. Overall, this novel approach offers promising potential for autonomous vehicles.