That being said, they obviously wouldn't sell if they didn't work but I wouldn't look at the popularity there as endorsement of cold weather performance, other factors are at play.
Wow. So tens of thousands of highly educated people in a cold climate country aren't a good enough indicator? What would be?
Educated people are the types of people that do a cost analysis taking into account tax incentives and choose the best value, even if cheap.
For example, Nissan Leafs are awful compared to other cars at the same sticker price and can hardly make it back and forth to work for a long commute. However, lots of people in the bay have them because:
* massive tax credits make it cheap
* it gets employees better parking at many offices
* free charging at many offices
* access to the HOV lane
1: http://www.ibtimes.com/tesla-owners-norway-get-134000-tax-br...
2: http://jalopnik.com/heres-why-the-tesla-model-s-is-the-1-sel...
1. Almost 20% of the population of Norway is in the Oslo urban area. There could be a fairly large number of people who could get by reasonably without ever having to drive outside that area, and so would be OK with it if their car's range was reduced by cold.
2. The next half dozen or so largest population centers in Norway are also in the southern part of the country, as is Oslo. It looks like the Supercharger coverage is sufficient that any trip between the top several urban areas would have access to one every 70-100 miles. This could make reduced range due to cold acceptable for many people.