The state of charge (SOC) of lithium battery is a key parameter for effective management of battery management systems (BMS). To address the problems of low precision, complex computation and poor robustness of traditional charging state estimation methods, an enhanced algorithm based on Unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is proposed. The singular value decomposition (SVD) method is adopted to ensure the normal operation of the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) algorithm even when the matrix P lacks positive semi-definiteness from a mathematical perspective. This enhancement significantly improves the theoretical robustness of UKF. Schmidt orthogonal transformation is concurrently used to reduce the computational complexity in the sampling point selection process, and the multi-innovation theory is combined with adaptive noise control to further improve the accuracy of SOC estimation. The algorithm is validated using the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS) condition. The simulation results are excited using Singular value decomposition-multi-innovation adaptive Schmidt orthogonal unscented Kalman filter method (SVD-MIASOUKF). 0.95 % and 1.29 % of maximum errors are obtained at 25 °C and −10 °C, while the maximum errors are 2.46 %–2.99 % using SVD-UKF and UKF. The proposed approach shows faster convergence speed and higher estimation accuracy in comparison to traditional algorithms.