Switched reluctance (SR) motors have a doubly salient pole structure and concentrated individual winding on each stator pole, while the rotor has no winding or magnet. Hence, SR motors have several advantages such as a simple and robust structure, low manufacturing cost, and excellent reliability under high temperature. Such advantages make SR motors suitable for the in-wheel direct drive motors used in electric vehicles (EVs). However, higher torque density is required since the volume of the motors is limited by the wheel space. We designed three kinds of axial-gap SR motors, i.e., a single stator, a double stator, and three-stator, two-rotor motors. The basic characteristics of these motors were calculated with the finite element method (FEM). As a result, we demonstrated that the axial-gap SR motor had higher torque density than a conventional radial-gap SR motor.