DRIVING CIRCUIT FOR SEMICONDUCTOR ELEMENT, DRIVING METHOD FOR SEMICONDUCTOR ELEMENT, AND MOTOR CONTROL DEVICE

[Object] To realize a reduction in power loss while securing a sufficient period of switching time.[Means of Realizing the Object] A main circuit MOSFET 100 includes: a pair of source terminal Sm and drain terminal Dm, through which a main current is conducted; and a gate terminal Gm, to which a gate voltage is applied to control a circulation state of the main current. A driving circuit 1 controls an over-time increase-decrease change in the gate voltage based on a change in a control signal input into the driving circuit 1. The driving circuit 1 includes: a driving voltage switching device 2, which based on a change in the control signal, makes a switching between driving voltages and outputs a driving voltage, among the driving voltages, that has been selected in the switching; a low-speed control device 3, which makes an increase-decrease change in the gate voltage at a low speed; a speed-increase control device 4, which makes a speed-increase control of increasing the speed of the increase-decrease change in the gate voltage made by the ow-speed control device 3; and a speed-increase switching device 5, which makes a switching between an execution and a non-execution of the speed-increase control executed by the speed-increase control device 4, and makes a switching levels of a speed-increase change caused by the speed-increase control.