SOLVED (See my answer below)
How can I display product base image in .phtml template file?
$relatedProducts = $product->getProduct()
->getRelatedProductCollection()
->addAttributeToSelect(['price','name','image','status']);
Can I put addAttributeToSelect to use for this?
I found this in one other post, but it doesn't work (I put it in Block/Product.php and called it in view/frontend/templates/related_products.phtml , the getImage() part doesn't get added to URL):
public function getProductImageUrl()
{
return $this->_storeManager->getStore()
->getBaseUrl(\Magento\Framework\UrlInterface::URL_TYPE_MEDIA) . 'catalog/product' . $this->getImage();
}