Yes, you can wash that away. everything made from PVC is like that until it loses some of it's outermost layer. Take a tootbrush you won't need anymore, and scrub away.
Except that isn't done gyroscopically.
The cup holder is not maintaining a vertical axis. It is changing it's axis to match the current acceleration vector. A gyroscope is the opposite of what you want. You can't even use a gyroscope as part of the sensor package here -- it has to be accelerometer based.
I love it. So many manufacturers put the Airbag module under the center console, and the less time I have to spend scraping a liquid damaged computer out from under an inch of dried up soda, coffee, and trash, the better.