Supercritical drying of V2O5 gels yields amorphous aerogels (ARG) that serve as reversible, high capacity hosts for lithium ion intercalation. We have found that ARG material consists of a highly interconnected solid network that has a specific pore volume of 2.3 cm(3)/g. The material hosts at least 4 Li+ per mole of V2O5 (ARG) as determined by both galvanostatic intermittent titration (GITT) and chemical lithiation (CL) techniques. The equilibrium voltage-composition curve is identical for both GITT and CL techniques as well. V2O5 (ARG) has a specific energy in excess of 1600 Wh/kg, the highest ever reported for any vanadium oxide host.