A motor drive device drives a multi-phase synchronous motor in an electric compressor. The multi-phase synchronous motor includes a rotor that is provided with a permanent magnet and a stator having coils of different phases. The motor drive device includes an inverter that supplies current to the coils and a control unit that controls the inverter. The control unit executes an initial angular position calculation processing of detecting a d-axis and a q-axis as an initial angular position of the rotor, a rotating processing of rotating the d-axis and the q-axis in a direction opposite to rotation of the rotor, an acceleration processing of accelerating the rotation of the rotor, and a sensorless control processing of controlling the rotation of the rotor.