The state of charge (SOC) estimation is one of the most important features in battery management system (BMS) for electric vehicles (EVs). In this article, a novel equivalent-circuit model (ECM) with an extra noise sequence is proposed to reduce the adverse effect of model error. Model parameters identification method with variable forgetting factor recursive extended least squares (VFFRELS), which combines a constructed incremental autoregressive and moving average (IARMA) model with differential measurement variables, is presented to obtain the ECM parameters. The independent open circuit voltage (OCV) estimator with error compensation factors is designed to reduce the OCV error of OCV fitting model. Based on the IARMA battery model analysis and the parameters identification, an SOC estimator by adaptive H-infinity filter (AHIF) is formulated. The adaptive strategy of the AHIF improves the numerical stability and robust performance by synchronous adjusting noise covariance and restricted factor. The results of experiment and simulation have verified that the proposed approach has superior advantage of parameters identification and SOC estimation to other estimation methods.