A concept is reported for long-lasting, high-performance lithium-ion anode with a uniform mixture of simultaneously prepared hierarchical carbon coated single crystal TiO₂ nanorod spheres and carbon spheres. Such anodes result in many merits, such as (1) uniform mixing of active materials and conductive materials on micro-size scale, (2) compensation of the volume change by the voids between hierarchically structured TiO₂ nanorod spheres, and (3) enhanced electronic conductivity of TiO₂.