Safe and reliable management of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries relies on accurate state-of-charge (SOC) estimation. SOC estimation algorithms developed based on the conventional state-space model can be inaccurate when the slope of the battery SOC to open-circuit voltage (V _OC ) profile is close to zero, where the observability matrix of the conventional battery state-space model is ill-conditioned. This ill-conditioned observability issue is usually overlooked and results in unreliable SOC estimations. This article proposes a robust state-space model using a set of carefully selected states, making the proposed model well-conditioned over the full SOC range and insesitive to the slope of the SOC-V _OC profile. The proposed model, therefore, solves the observability issue and improves the SOC estimation accuracy. To examine the performance of the proposed state-space model over the full SOC range, the battery is discharged using a standard electric vehicle driving profile. Experiments are further carried out in various environmental temperature conditions to validate the robustness of the proposed model. The results show that the proposed state-space model is robust against the change of the slope of the SOC-V _OC profile and significantly improves the SOC estimation accuracy, rendering more than 30% improvement in various temperature conditions.