In order to reduce the system cost, volumetric size and weight of an electric vehicles (EVs) battery charger, a novel four-switch two-leg VSI configuration is propose for rapid battery charging with the active power filter (APF) features. It consists of cost-effective two-arm bridge converter, coupling inductors, LC filters, buck converter and EV battery. Note that the conventional three-leg bridge structure is reduce to two-leg VSI structure, functioning like three-phase rectifier to converts power from ac-dc during the battery charging process. The third-leg and set of power switching devices are eliminate by directly connecting the grid phase with the negative terminals of dc-link capacitor. Therefore, third leg of the EV charger is use as a buck converter for battery charging. The charger controller ensures the rapid charging capabilities in constant current and constant voltage (CC-CV) modes, with additional functions of harmonic compensation capability, power factor correction, reactive power compensation and constant dc-link voltage. The experimental results verify the validity and effectiveness performance of the laboratory based EV charger prototype.