To improve the economy of a multi-axle electric vehicle, an optimal driving force distribution control strategy is proposed in this paper. The drive torque distribution is optimized offline to achieve optimal efficiency of the drive system, and then a drive mode table for online application is generated. Through table interpolation, the number of active driving axles and the specific driving axles to be activated is determined based on the instantaneous axle loads so as to make full use of the ground adhesion. A backward simulation model is established using MATLAB/Simulink, and simulation analyses are carried out under the adapted world transient vehicle cycle working condition. The simulation results show that the proposed optimal driving force distribution control strategy improves energy consumption by 9.18% compared with the average torque distribution control strategy and by 6.12% compared with the axle load ratio based control strategy.