Various nanostructured materials, namely, multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWNT), graphene, Vulcan XC-72 carbon, lead oxide nanorods and ball milled lead oxide nanospheres have been incorporated as additives in the negative paste mix of lead acid battery negative electrodes. Charge/discharge cycling has been performed at room temperature on 9 Ah cells with 2 (+) ve/1 (-) ve cells assembled from these negative electrodes and their performances have been compared. It has been noticed that the graphene and MWNT additives introduced negative electrodes give 11 and 12% improved specific capacity and active material utilization (a.m.u), respectively, than those of the electrodes without additive. The reasons for this improvement is attributed to integration of these additives into the skeleton structure of the negative active mass of the electrodes that forms uniform rectangular beads of size <200 nm during the course of charge/discharge cycling. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.