Electric vehicles (EVs) represent one of the most promising technologies to green the transportation systems. An important issue is that high penetration of EVs brings heavy electricity demand to the power grid. One effective way to alleviate the impact is to integrate local power generation such as renewable energy sources (RESs) into charging infrastructure. Because of the intermittent and indispatchable nature of RESs, it becomes very challenging to coordinate EVs charging with other grid load and renewable generation. In this paper, EVs charging problem in the presence of smart grid technologies is investigated, and the interaction with renewable energy is reviewed. An overview about EVs and RESs is first presented, which mainly introduces major types of EVs and renewable energy estimation methods. Then, according to the objectives, the existing research works are divided into three categories: cost-aware, efficiency-aware, and emissions-aware interactions between EVs and RESs. Each category׳s discussion includes the description of core ideas, summarization of solutions, and comparison between different works. Finally, some key open issues about EVs interacting with RESs are given and some possible solutions are also discussed.