Conductive material coating on redox efficient transition-metal oxides is one of the approaches to enhance the conductivity of the metal oxides. This approach could greatly boost the electrochemical performance of supercapacitors. In this article an attractive low cost method to coat conductive carbon on V2O5 nanostructures is reported. When utilized as supercapacitor electrodes, this smart combination of C@V2O5 nanorods exhibits attractive capacitive features, including higher capacitance (417Fg−1 at 0.5Ag−1), superior rate capacity (341Fg−1 at 10Ag−1), very low charge transfer resistance (1.1Ω) and better cyclic stability. An asymmetric supercapacitor device based on C@V2O5 nanorod electrode delivers an energy density of 9.4Whkg−1 at a power density of 170Wkg−1.