For enhancing the operational safety of an electric drive unit of a vehicle comprising a generator, which is operated by a combustion machine, and drive motors, which are connected to said generator via a direct-voltage intermediate circuit, the generator and drive motors are each subdivided into partial units, and these partial units have partial power electronics units associated therewith. The mutually corresponding partial units of generator, motors and power electronics units each constitute a drive circuit of their own, with control signals being supplied to components thereof by a specifically assigned system control unit. The system control units that are interconnected via an information exchange channel can undertake compensation measures in their drive circuit or in the other drive circuits in the event of a complete or partial failure of a drive circuit. As an alter-native to the assignment of one system control unit at a time to a drive circuit, here may also be several system control units connected to the individual drive circuits via bus connections or via multiple single channels.