Is there any way to see the esptool upload command?
Only elf2bin command is shown in verbose mode.
Running visual code under MacOS pio v. 4.0.0a23
My bad. Sorry for that one. It actually did not show the command due to my serial port being unavailable at the time.
No worries 
As I gather you found out, it does get shown… i.e.
"/home/pfeerick/.platformio/penv/bin/python2.7" "/home/pfeerick/.platformio/packages/framework-arduinoespressif8266/tools/espota.py" --debug --progress -i upstairs-light-controller.local -f .pioenvs/d1_mini-OTA/firmware.bin