A motor drive apparatus includes multiple inverter circuits provided corresponding, respectively, to multiple motors, a controller configured to control the inverter circuits using switching signals, a detector configured to detect a current ripple generated by switching operations of the inverter circuits. The controller operates in a first mode and a second mode. In the first mode, carrier wave frequencies of reference carrier waves used to generate the switching signals for all the motors are set to the same basic frequency. In the second mode, the carrier frequency of the motor having a higher priority is set to the basic frequency, and the carrier frequency of the motor having a lower priority is set to a preset shift frequency. When the current ripple is not less than a predetermined value, a transition occurs from the first mode to the second mode.