Sometimes things just aren’t what they appear to be! N-way refers to the number of ways the frequency spectrum is divided before being fed to a driver complement. It does not directly relate to the number of actual drivers.
Take KEF for example. Most of their speakers include two drivers mounted concentrically. The tweeter sits in the middle of the mid-range driver and to the casual observer the assembly looks like just one driver. But there is a crossover where the higher frequencies are sent to the tweeter and the lower frequencies go to the mid-range.
The very popular LS50 is an example. Now move up to the much more expensive Reference series. In addition to a concentric tweeter / midrange assembly, separate woofers look after lower frequencies. There are 3-way designs that look like two-way ones (the Reference 1). Move up again, and the Reference 3 has two woofers so it is a 3-way that actually looks like a 3-way, even though the two outer drivers are fed the same signal. The Reference 5 uses four woofers, so I guess it could look like a 5-way although it is really a 3-way.
Crossovers are tricky. They cannot have a sharp switchover of frequencies, so in the crossover region, some signal is fed both ways. Two drivers have less impedance than one, so more current flows in the crossover region. Amplifiers have to work harder to produce this current, giving some speakers the reputation of being hard to drive.
Two separated drivers playing the same frequency produce waveforms that interfere (reinforce and cancel) as you move off-axis. Concentric drivers were invented to eliminate this effect, known as comb filtering.
Ideally there would be no crossovers and a single driver. The laws of physics make this impossible for conventional dynamic drivers - those with big magnets, and cones driven by electric coils. To get good bass, the driver needs to move a lot of air, so it needs to be big. Big cones cannot move fast enough to produce higher frequencies without the cone going into nasty bending modes known as breakup. Hence the use of specialised drivers and crossovers.
Move to different technologies, such as electrostatics, and audio nirvana may await - full frequency range with no crossovers.
