How to know if the 2017 prius battery is ion lithium or nickel?

Not sure about there - but here, it's a sticker in the front of the Warranty and Service Manual.

 

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Say what?? There were (are) two battery chemistry options in the Gen 4 Prius depending on the trim level. Nothing was customized.

In 2018, the trim one and two have NiMH. All others (two ECO, three, three touring, four, and four touring) have Li-ion. It's in the Toyota brochure. So, just use the VIN to be sure of the trim if it isn't already obvious and look up the trim level on the toyota owner's page.

 

There were other differences in the cars depending on the hybrid battery - the mapping of the ECUs is significantly different for obvious reasons to do with the battery management, and that could affect other aspects. Not sure if the ICE ECU mapping is different - it could well be.

 

Log into Welcome to Toyota Owners
and add the VIN. It'll tell you Prius model and maintenance history.

 

The image @jerrymildred kindly shared comes from the sales brochure for 2018 (PDF); the 2017 brochure (PDF) has a similar table.

The first few characters of the VIN can be decoded to give the basic model code, which identifies the type of HV battery; see my previous posting, valid through model year 2019.

In your example, a VIN starting with JTDKARFU has basic model code ZVW51, indicating a two-wheel-drive, fourth-generation Prius car with a Li-ion battery; like all fourth-generation Prius cars, it was built by Toyota in Japan and has a 2ZR-FXE gasoline engine. The “H” in position 10 indicates model year 2017; model year 2018 vehicles have a “J” in that position.

On its own, the VIN just tells you the basic model code, not the trim (grade) level, for which you have to check Toyota’s database, as @mjoo kindly mentioned. If you don’t need the maintenance history, you don’t have to log in; see Toyota’s Vehicle Specification page. (Note that information about some U.S. vehicles isn’t available there.)

 

And all the AWD versions are nickel IIRC?

 

Yes, you remember correctly. In fact, the AWDe models are the only ones now with NiMH.