In this work, porous vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) nanotubes have been synthesized by a simple electrospinning technique followed by an annealing process with using low-cost inorganic vanadium precursor. By controlling the annealing time at 400°C, a small amount of polymer pyrolysis carbon can be retained which improves the conductivity of the porous V2O5 nanotubes. When evaluated as a cathode material for lithium ion batteries, the porous V2O5 nanotubes delivered capacities of 114.9, 99.7 and 79.6mAhg−1 at 10, 20 and 50C in the voltage range of 2.5-4.0V, respectively. Moreover, the porous V2O5 nanotubes display good cycling performance, the capacity retention is 97.4% after 200 cycles at 50C. The results indicate that fabricating nanostructured V2O5 with a porous interconnected morphology is an effective way to improve the electrochemical performance of V2O5.