..even road pricing (at its simplest at least) may not be equivalent to fuel tax.
Currently, and generalising slightly, over the same distance less efficient vehicles are effectively taxed at a higher rate than more efficient ones, since they use more fuel.
Road pricing could remove some of the incentives for efficiency if it were implemented simply as a "price per mile".
As/when the technology allows, I suspect the only answer to that is not to "flat rate" it, but to band it in various different ways, e.g.:
...banded price per mile by specific vehicle type/model (based on nominal distance per unit of energy consumed?)
...differential pricing, banded by car, for specific sections of road (this would drive traffic volumes, and also allow the subsuming of LEZ and congestion charges into the single tax).
...etc.
The more criteria and differentiation added, the less it would be easily understandable to the public, but it could be tailored nicely to drive the appropriate tax revenue and behaviour.
(It strikes me, however, that having to pay to fuel a vehicle in advance, rather than waiting for a bill to appear sometime down the line with a substantial part of any journey cost, will/would take some getting used to).
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