This paper presents a high-speed drive to be used for electrically-assisted turbo charging in an internal combustion engine. The electrification of the turbo-charger system can enhance the performance and reduce the dynamic drawbacks that affect conventional solutions i.e. turbo-lag. However, the design of the electric drive presents some challenges, especially related to the thermally aggressive environment and the high rotational speed. Therefore, a system level design approach needs to be adopted, where all the different sub-systems of the drive are addressed simultaneously. Thus, this paper includes considerations for the thermal and electromagnetic machine design. Furthermore, a voltage source inverter featuring wide-bandgap SiC power devices is described, and a sensorless rotor position detection and digital control is used to drive the machine. Finally, the test setup and preliminary experimental results are presented.