Abstract: High-performance electrical sheet strip for new energy vehicles belongs to the thin-gauge, high grade non-oriented silicon steel. Due to its high silicon and aluminum content, it exhibits significant brittleness, leading to considerable production difficulty in cold rolling, high rates of strip breakage, and low yields. The causes of edge defects generated during normalizing and edge trimming were clarified in this paper by observing the shear section morphology and metallographic microstructure of the normalized sheets. Through mechanical property tests and rolling experiments at different temperatures and reduction rates, the relationships between the strip entry temperature, reduction ratio per pass, and exit temperature in the first cold rolling pass and strip breakage was established. Accordingly, production processes were improved as follows. The shear zone was controlled to be no less than 1/2 and no more than 3/4 of the strip thickness. The strip edge was heated (or kept) to 60 ℃ or above. Cemented carbide blades were adopted, with the disc shear blade clearance set at 10% of the strip thickness and the overlap at 1.5-2.0 mm. The temperature inside the normalizing furnace and the cooling mode of the strip after exiting the furnace were optimized to improve the temperature difference accuracy within the furnace and cooling uniformity. The strip temperature at the start of cold rolling should be set between 60 ℃ and 150 ℃. For production using a 20-high mill, due to its small diameter work rolls and rapid heat dissipation, the initial rolling temperature should be set between 75 ℃ and 125 ℃, and the reduction ratio of the first pass should be no less than 35%. With these process improvements, the strip breakage rate of silicon steel for new energy vehicle motors during cold rolling was reduced from the original 38.6% to 0.56%,and the yield increased by approximately 3%.