True many car ads are actually cgi
The car being advertised is then edited in over the top, using the recorded environment to ensure accurate lighting and colours.
How would they add a driver for an actual ad? I think cars are much easier than humans to do photo-realistically in CGI. Or do they just show the car in a way such that you can't see that there's no driver?
I don't know that it materially makes much of a difference or really matters for car ads... as long as the cars shown can accomplish/look like in reality what they appear as in the ads. Still yet I think the intent is to have the public believe that they are watching video of the actual vehicles, in which case, one could call this "lying" in some form (whether or not we want to ascribe any particular moral bent to the term)