The presented doctoral thesis handles the analysis of the optimized synchronous reluctance drive for effective application in wind turbines and battery electric vehicles. Herefor, the fractional slot concentrated and conventional distributed windings electric machine for traction applications shall be analyzed and optimized. Besides that, for the wind energy application area, the synchronous reluctance machine with double-layer integer-slot concentrated winding will be taken under the loupe. The analysis will prove the validity of the cost-effective, high-efficient synchronous reluctance machine for large-scale wind energy conversion systems. For achieving such results, the developed flux barrier design method for torque ripple reduction in synchronous reluctance machines will be described. The simulation results will show the reduced values for the torque ripples. The applicability of the method to different winding types will be shown. For the further optimization of the synchronous reluctance drive, a magnetomotive force with improved quality in combination with a decrease of torque pulsation and increased fault tolerance, synchronous reluctance machine with a multiphase cage-winding will be introduced and investigated. Based on developments on the topic of rotor geometry optimizations, results on investigations on intelligent stator cage drive with reluctance rotor will be introduced. The represented flux barrier design method will prove itself as applicable, and essential improvements in the machine characteristics are resulting from that.