Battery management system (BMS) is one of the key subsystems of electric vehicle, and the battery state-of -charge (SOC) is a crucial input for the calculations of energy and power. Therefore, SOC estimation is a significant task for BMS. In this paper, a new method for online estimating SOC is proposed, which combines a novel adaptive extended Kalman filter (AEKF) and a parameter identification algorithm based on adaptive recursive least squares (RLS). Specifically, according to the first order R-C network equivalent circuit model, the battery model parameters are identified online using the RLS with multiple forgetting factors. Based on the identified parameters, the novel AEKF is used to accurately estimate the battery SOC. The online identification of parameter tracks the varying model. At the same time, due to the novel AEKF algorithm to dynamically adjust the system noise parameter, excellent accuracy of the SOC real-time estimation is obtained. Experiments are set to evaluate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed SOC estimation method. The simulation test results indicate that under DST and UDDS conditions, the maximum absolute errors are less than 0.01 after filtering convergence. In addition, the maximum absolute error is less than 0.02 in the simulation of DST with current and voltage measurement noise, so is in DST with current offset sensor error. The tests indicate that the proposed method can accurately estimate battery SOC and has strong robustness.