For the requirement of building up the battery management system (BMS) of hybrid vehicles(HEVs), the real time measurement and estimation of charge (SOC) of the Ni MH batteries are investigated, because the popular SOC definition is unsuitable under the condition of variable current discharge. The origin of this kind unsuitability are analyzed ,and the characteristics and existing problems of different kinds of SOC measuring methods are compared. On the basis of mentioned above, some corrections are given to the popular SOC definition, and the new conception of SOC is proposed. The corrected definition of SOC is suitable for the real time SOC estimation under the variable current condition of the batteries used in HEVs. Based on the corrected SOC definition, the computational model of the new SOC is built and simulated. Satisfactory result has been obtained from comparisons of the simulating results, which shows that the theoretical model provides a basis for optimizing the adaptation of power system to the hybrid vehicles (HEVs).