Abstract <p>This study aims to implement a hybrid charging technique that enables fast charging of EV batteries and mitigating the potential adverse effects on the battery health. Unlike the conventional constant current-constant voltage (CC-CV) charging method, this approach employs a novel constant current-pulsed constant voltage (CC-PCV) technique, where the current is delivered in pulses during the constant voltage phase of charging. Additionally, it proposes an integrated charge equalization (CE) circuit to ensure a balanced charging process of all battery cells. The proposed CE method neither dissipates excess energy in passive components nor redistributes energy among unbalanced battery cells. Instead, it takes energy directly from the source and accelerates the charging process of those battery cells that have lower State of Charge (<i>SOC</i>) levels compared to others. Thus, both equalization time and overall charging time reduce during charge imbalanced conditions. Further, the efficiency of the system is improved by incorporating soft-switching operation of LLC resonant DC-DC converter. Furthermore, the reduced number of switches for CE process will further improve the efficiency of the charger. The proposed method is validated through MATLAB/simulink and followed by real-time experimental validations in OPAL-RT.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>