Aiming at compatibility of tracking control accuracy and steering stability of four-wheel independent drive and independent steering vehicles, and considering reducing tire wear and improving tire service life, an adaptive tracking control method is proposed based on Ackerman steering principle and RBF neural network PID theory. Firstly, an adaptive steering controller based on RBF neural network PID theory is designed to control the front inner wheel angle and ensure tracking accuracy. Secondly, the rear inner wheel carries out auxiliary steering with a goal of reducing the sideslip angle of center of mass to ensure steering stability. Then, based on Ackerman steering principle, the outer wheel angle is determined to ensure reasonable distribution of side deflection force of each tire. Finally, the same instantaneous center method is used to determine the spin speed of each wheel to reduce tire slip rate. In this paper, a joint simulation platform of CarSim and MATLAB/Simulink is built and simulation experiments are carried out. The results show that the tracking control method proposed in this paper can not only obtain small tracking deviation and centroid sideslip angle, which ensure sufficient tracking control accuracy and steering stability, but also reduce tire slip rate, which is conducive to reducing the tire wear.