Lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in electric vehicles because of their high energy density and less pollution. As an important parameter of the battery management system, accurate estimation of the state of charge (SOC) of the battery can ensure the energy distribution and safe use of the battery. This paper obtains better estimation accuracy from four aspects. First, the battery model is established via Thevenin equivalent circuit model, and the parameters are identified by the forgetting factor recursive least squares. Second, the influence of dual extended Kalman filter on SOC estimation is analysed, a novel algorithm‐based improved dual Kalman filter is proposed. Besides, to reduce the influence of the system noise on the estimation results, an adaptive intelligent algorithm is applied to promote the accuracy of SOC estimation. Finally, compared with the estimated SOC results of the traditional algorithm, the experimental results show the effectiveness of the algorithm.