Problem you may be having, or feature you want: The ability to set a podcast speed by the podcast rather than for all podcasts. Some podcasts are slower than others and can be listened to at 1.5x or 2x speed, others already talk fast and 1x or 1.25x is plenty. This would be especially useful for multi-lingual podcast listeners who would benefit from a 1x or even .75x replay for podcasts in other languages.
Suggested solution: Allow a setting that permits users to set podcast speeds by podcast
That is already supported. You can set whether specific podcasts should/should not follow the global playback speed setting from each podcast’s settings screen.
I agree with @loucasal.
But there is a point for improvement. If the user presses an icon to change playback speed in Android Auto, there should be a small number near the icon which shows the current speed. After some clicking I usually don’t know what the speed is.