Abstract Finding diverse applications of installed PV based power generating unit is necessary for optimal utilization of energy produced by these units over a period of time. This paper proposes a high gain boost converter that can be used as a DC source for electric vehicle charging application in existing PV based solar pump set-up. The proposed DC-DC converter uses two-stage boosting to achieve a high voltage gain in the form of quadratic quadrupled boost factor. Low turns ratio in coupled inductor reduces the loss components of magnetic part largely. Another advantage of the proposed converter is its operation at lower duty ratio (~0.5) to achieve the desired voltage gain for photovoltaic application. Further, leakage inductance is effectively utilized to achieve ZCS of solid-state devices in conjunction with magnetizing inductance, which provides ZVS for the efficient operation of converter. To analyze the performance of proposed converter for electric vehicle charging application, simulations were carried out using PSIM/MATLAB software and results were validated using experiments conducted on a 250 W hardware prototype developed in the laboratory. A boost factor of 7.8 is achieved at a turn’s ratio of 1.9 for ~35% duty ratio of main switch. The maximum efficiency of ~93% is measured for designed converter.