Loosely coupled inductive power transfer (IPT) systems have recently gained worldwide attention for electric vehicle (EV) battery charging. EV batteries have mainly two charging stages: constant voltage charging and constant current charging stage. Numerous published papers suggest that the secondary of loosely coupled IPT systems, if series compensated, can act as constant-voltage source; and, if parallel compensated, it can act as constant-current source. In this paper the authors have shown that both series as well as parallel compensated secondary can act as constant-current source as well as a constant-voltage source, depending on the nature of power supply. Hence, same topology can be utilized efficiently for EV charging in all the stages. Moreover a detailed comparison of series-series and series- parallel topology has been presented with intention of showing that Series-Series topology represents the best choice for IPT system among the two. © 2014 IEEE.